After a long time I heard the carriage stop before the house, then little Mary ran up-stairs. She caught me in her arms, and hugged me. “You darling thing, I was afraid you were lost. Why did you not wait for me?” Then her eye fell on Serena. “Why, pussy dear,” she said, “how did you get here?—Mamma, Mamma,” and she ran in the hall, and met Mrs. Denville who was just coming up-stairs. “Here is one of Mrs. Darley's pussies. We must send her right back.”
Mrs. Denville looked puzzled. However, she rang the bell in Mary's room, and sent for Anthony. Serena did not resist. She knew that this would probably happen. She fawned on Mrs. Denville and Mary, and purred round them, but they did not understand her.
Anthony took her home, and in an hour she was back again.
Mrs. Denville returned her once more, and this time, Serena got back before Anthony did. Then Mrs. Denville began to comprehend the affair, and, smiling peculiarly, she called Serena, and went into her own room.
Mr. Denville came out of his dressing-room in his shirt sleeves, and stopped rubbing his face with a towel to look at us as we stood there, his wife, Serena and I.
“Well!” he said expectantly, “do I see double, or have you another Black-Face there?”
“It is Black-Face's sister,” replied Mrs. Denville, “and she is acting so strangely. She won't stay at home, and Anthony says that Mrs. Darley is very much amused, and sends word for us to keep her if we wish her. I thought cats liked their homes.”
“So they do,” said Mr. Denville, “as a general thing, but there are cat cranks as well as human cranks. Come here, runaway.”
Serena glided up to him. Oh! the grace and elegance of her motions! “Dear me!” he said, “what style—what manners! We have something pretty high-toned here, Maud.”
“But we don't want three cats,” said his wife with a laugh.
“Ship them to Maine,” he replied, and he laughed too, and went back into his room.
Serena was in an ecstasy. She posed, she swam through the air, she threw out her chest, she held up her head. She was addressing an audience of country cats. She was being hailed as the talented lecturer from Boston. I really thought she would expire from happiness.
When we came to bed she swelled so, or perhaps I should say, she expanded so enormously with happiness, and gratified conceit, that there was no room for me in the big chair beside her. I crept to the foot of Mary's bed, and here I lie, watching Serena's pretty chest rise and fall in a gleam of electric light that shines through the window.