The maids agreed, sipping the tea from their saucers.
But Hamlet was not happy. He did not care to-night for Mrs. Hounslow’s embraces. He was not happy. He struggled from her lap on to the floor, and sat there scratching himself.
When ten struck he was taken to his warm corner near the oven. She curled him up, she bent down and kissed him. The lights were turned out, and he was alone. He could not sleep. The loud ticking of the kitchen clock, for so many months a pleasant sleepy sound, to-night disturbed him.
He was not happy. He got up and wandered about the kitchen, sniffing. He went to the door. It was ajar. He pushed it with his nose. Something was leading him. He remembered now—how well he remembered! Up these dark stairs, under that hissing clock, up these stairs again, along that passage, the moon grinning at him through the window (but, of course, he did not know that it was the moon). Up more stairs, along this wall, then this door! He pushed with his nose; it moved; he squeezed himself through.
He hesitated, sniffing. Then—how familiar this was—a spring, and he was on the bed; a step or two, and he was licking his master’s cheek.
A cry: “Hamlet! Oh, Hamlet!” He snuggled under his master’s arm, licking the cheek furiously, planting his paw, but with the nails carefully drawn in, on his master’s neck. Once more that hand was about his head, the scratch first to the left, then to the right, then the pulling of the ears. . . .
With a sigh of satisfaction he sank into the hollow of his master’s body, and in another second was asleep.
These Christmas holidays had begun badly. Jeremy’s mood was wrong from the very start. He had not wished it to be wrong. He had come determined to find everything right and beautiful. Now nothing was right and nothing was beautiful.
For one thing, there was nothing to do. It was not the custom nearly thirty years ago to invent games, occupations and employments for your young as it is to-day. Mrs. Cole, loving her children, had nevertheless enough to do to make the house go round, and Mr. Cole was busy in his study. The children would amuse themselves—who could doubt it—but at the same time there were so many things that they must not do that as the days passed they were more and more restricted and confined.