She was distracted from these interesting thoughts by the sounds of footsteps. The kitten heard them too, and sat up, yawning. The Leaks coming back from their lecture, thought Laura. But it was Titus. Inserting his head and shoulders through the window he asked if he could come in and borrow some milk.
“I haven’t any milk,” said Laura, “but come in all the same.”
She began to tickle the kitten behind the ears in order to reassure it. By lamplight Titus’s head seemed even nearer to the ceiling, it was a relief to her sense of proportion when he sat down. His milk, he explained, the jugful which Mrs. Garland left on the sitting-room table for his nightly Ovaltine, had curdled into a sort of unholy junket. This he attributed to popular education, and the spread of science among dairy-farmers; in other words, Mr. Dodbury had overdone the preservative.
“I don’t think it’s science,” said Laura. “More likely to be the weather. It was very sultry this afternoon.”
“I saw you starting out. I had half a mind to come with you, but it was too hot to be a loving nephew. Where did you go?”
“Up to the windmill.”
“Did you find the wind?”
“No.”
“You weren’t going in the direction of the windmill when I saw you.”
“No. I changed my mind. About the milk,” she continued (Titus had come for milk. Perhaps, being reminded that he had come in vain, he would go. She was growing sleepy): “I’m sorry, but I have none left. I gave it all to the kitten.”
“I’ve been remarking the kitten. He’s new, isn’t he? You ugly little devil!”
The kitten lay on her knees quite quietly. It regarded Titus with its pale eyes, and blinked indifferently. It was only waiting for him to go, Laura thought, to fall asleep again.
“Where has it come from? A present from the water-butt?”
“I don’t know. I found it here when I came back for supper.”
“It’s a plain-headed young Grimalkin. Still, I should keep it if I were you. It will bring you luck.”
“I don’t think one has much option about keeping a cat,” said Laura. “If it wants to stay with me it shall.”
“It looks settled enough. Do keep it, Aunt Lolly. A woman looks her best with a cat on her knees.”
Laura bowed.
“What will you call it?”
Into Laura’s memory came a picture she had seen long ago in one of the books at Lady Place. The book was about the persecution of the witches, and the picture was a woodcut of Matthew Hopkins the witch-finder. Wearing a large hat he stood among a coven of witches, bound cross-legged upon their stools. Their confessions came out of their mouths upon scrolls, “My imp’s name is Ilemauzar,” said one; and another imp at the bottom of the page, an alert, ill-favoured cat, so lean and muscular that it looked like a skinned hare, was called Vinegar Tom.
“I shall call it Vinegar,” she answered.
“Vinegar!” said Titus. “How do you like your name?”
The kitten pricked up its ears. It sprang from Laura’s knee and began to fence with Titus’s shadow, feinting and leaping back. Laura watched it a little apprehensively, but it did him no harm. It had awakened in a playful frame of mind after its long sleep, that was all. When Titus had departed it followed Laura to her bedroom, and as she undressed it danced round her, patting at her clothes as they fell.
In the morning the kitten roused her by mewing to be let out. She awoke from a profound and dreamless sleep. It took her a little time to realise that she had a kitten in her bedroom, a kitten of no ordinary kind. However it was behaving quite like an ordinary kitten now, so she got out of bed and let it out by the back door. It was early; no one was stirring. The kitten disappeared with dignity among the cabbages, and Laura turned her thoughts backward to the emotions of overnight. She tried to recall them, but could not; she could only recall the fact that overnight she had felt them. The panic that then had shaken her flesh was no more actual than a last winter’s gale. It had been violent enough while it lasted, an invisible buffeting, a rending of life from its context. But now her memory presented it to her as a cold slab of experience, like a slab of pudding that had lain all night solidifying in the larder. This was no matter. Her terror had been an incident; it had no bearing upon her future, could she now recall it to life it would have no message for her. But she regretted her inability to recapture the mood that had followed upon it, when she sat still and thought so wisely about Satan. Those meditations had seemed to her of profound import. She had sat at her Master’s feet, as it were, admitted to intimacy, and gaining the most valuable insight into his character. But that was gone too. Her thoughts, recalled, seemed to be of the most commonplace nature, and she felt that she knew very little about the Devil.
Meanwhile there was the kitten, an earnest that she should know more.
“Vinegar!” she called, and heard its answer, a drumming scramble among the cabbage leaves. She wished that Vinegar would impart some of his mind to her instead of being so persistently and genially kittenish. But he was a familiar, no doubt of it. And she was a witch, the inheritrix of aged magic, spells rubbed smooth with long handling, and the mistress of strange powers that got into Titus’s milk-jug. For no doubt that was the beginning, and a very good beginning, too. Well begun is half-done; she could see Titus bending over his suitcase. The Willowes tradition was very intolerant of peas under its mattress.
Though she tried to think clearly about the situation—grapple, she remembered, had been
