Part 28 (1/2)

”What do you want me to do with it,” I heard her asking an excited lady on one occasion; ”cook it?”

”It's my cat,” said the lady; ”that's what that is.”

”Well, I'm not making cat pie to-day,” answered our cook. ”You take it to its proper table. This is my table.”

At first, ”Justice” was generally satisfied with half a crown, but as time went on cats rose. I had hitherto regarded cats as a cheap commodity, and I became surprised at the value attached to them. I began to think seriously of breeding cats as an industry. At the prices current in that village, I could have made an income of thousands.

”Look what your beast has done,” said one irate female, to whom I had been called out in the middle of dinner.

I looked. Thomas Henry appeared to have ”done” a mangy, emaciated animal, that must have been far happier dead than alive. Had the poor creature been mine I should have thanked him; but some people never know when they are well off.

”I wouldn't ha' taken a five-pun' note for that cat,” said the lady.

”It's a matter of opinion,” I replied, ”but personally I think you would have been unwise to refuse it. Taking the animal as it stands, I don't feel inclined to give you more than a s.h.i.+lling for it. If you think you can do better by taking it elsewhere, you do so.”

”He was more like a Christian than a cat,” said the lady.

”I'm not taking dead Christians,” I answered firmly, ”and even if I were I wouldn't give more than a s.h.i.+lling for a specimen like that. You can consider him as a Christian, or you can consider him as a cat; but he's not worth more than a s.h.i.+lling in either case.”

We settled eventually for eighteenpence.

The number of cats that Thomas Henry contrived to dispose of also surprised me. Quite a ma.s.sacre of cats seemed to be in progress.

One evening, going into the kitchen, for I made it a practice now to visit the kitchen each evening, to inspect the daily consignment of dead cats, I found, among others, a curiously marked tortoisesh.e.l.l cat, lying on the table.

”That cat's worth half a sovereign,” said the owner, who was standing by, drinking beer.

I took up the animal, and examined it.

”Your cat killed him yesterday,” continued the man. ”It's a burning shame.”

”My cat has killed him three times,” I replied. ”He was killed on Sat.u.r.day as Mrs. Hedger's cat; on Monday he was killed for Mrs. Myers. I was not quite positive on Monday; but I had my suspicions, and I made notes. Now I recognise him. You take my advice, and bury him before he breeds a fever. I don't care how many lives a cat has got; I only pay for one.”

We gave Thomas Henry every chance to reform; but he only went from bad to worse, and added poaching and chicken-stalking to his other crimes, and I grew tired of paying for his vices.

I consulted the gardener, and the gardener said he had known cats taken that way before.

”Do you know of any cure for it?” I asked.

”Well, sir,” replied the gardener, ”I have heard as how a dose of brickbat and pond is a good thing in a general way.”

”We'll try him with a dose just before bed time,” I answered. The gardener administered it, and we had no further trouble with him.

Poor Thomas Henry! It shows to one how a reputation for respectability may lie in the mere absence of temptation. Born and bred in the atmosphere of the Reform Club, what gentleman could go wrong? I was sorry for Thomas Henry, and I have never believed in the moral influence of the country since.

THE CITY OF THE SEA

They say, the chroniclers who have written the history of that low-lying, wind-swept coast, that years ago the foam fringe of the ocean lay further to the east; so that where now the North Sea creeps among the treacherous sand-reefs, it was once dry land. In those days, between the Abbey and the sea, there stood a town of seven towers and four rich churches, surrounded by a wall of twelve stones' thickness, making it, as men reckoned then, a place of strength and much import; and the monks, glancing their eyes downward from the Abbey garden on the hill, saw beneath their feet its narrow streets, gay with the ever pa.s.sing of rich merchandise, saw its many wharves and water-ways, ever noisy with the babel of strange tongues, saw its many painted masts, wagging their grave heads above the dormer roofs and quaintly-carved oak gables.