Her heart was like a bird agitated in its gilt-wire cage by
the contemplation of a distant cat. She did not, however, lose her sense
of what was practical, but said calmly: "Your husband was wounded in
South Africa, you told me? It looks as if he wasn't quite.... I think
you should have a doctor!"
The seamstress's answer, slow and matter-of-fact, was worse than her
emotion.
"No, m'm, he isn't mad."
Crossing to the hearth-whose Persian-blue tiling had taken her so
long to find--Cecilia stood beneath a reproduction of Botticelli's
"Primavera," and looked doubtfully at Mrs. Hughs. The Persian kitten,
sleepy and disturbed on the bosom of her blouse, gazed up into her face.
'Consider me,' it seemed to say; 'I am worth consideration; I am of a
piece with you, and everything round you. We are both elegant and rather
slender; we both love warmth and kittens; we both dislike interference
with our fur. You took a long time to buy me, so as to get me perfect.
You see that woman over there! I sat on her lap this morning while she
was sewing your curtains. She has no right in here; she's not what she
seems; she can bite and scratch, I know; her lap is skinny; she drops
water from her eyes. She made me wet all down my back. Be careful what
you're doing, or she'll make you wet down yours!'
All that was like the little Persian kitten within Cecilia--cosiness
and love of pretty things, attachment to her own abode with its
high-art lining, love for her mate and her own kitten, Thyme, dread of
disturbance--all made her long to push this woman from the room; this
woman with the skimpy figure, and eyes that, for all their patience, had
in them something virago-like; this woman who carried about with her an
atmosphere of sordid grief, of squalid menaces, and scandal.
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