“Yes, it’s very simple,” Sylvie said politely. “Has the cat had enough?” This was to Bruno, who had brought back the saucer only half-emptied.
But Bruno did not hear the question. “There’s somebody scratching at the door and wanting to come in,” he said. And he scrambled down off his chair, and went and cautiously peeped out through the doorway.
“Who was it wanted to come in?” Sylvie asked, as he returned to his place.
“It were a Mouse,” said Bruno. “And it peepted in. And it saw the Cat. And it said ‘I’ll come in another day.’ And I said ‘Oo needn’t be flightened. The Cat’s welly kind to Mouses.’ And it said ‘But I’s got some imporkant business, what I must attend to.’ And it said ‘I’ll call again tomorrow.’ And it said ‘Give my love to the Cat.’ ”
“What a fat cat it is!” said the Lord Chancellor, leaning across the Professor to address his small neighbour. “It’s quite a wonder!”
“It was awfully fat when it camed in,” said Bruno: “so it would be more wonderfuller if it got thin all in a minute.”
“And that was the reason, I suppose,” the Lord Chancellor suggested, “why you didn’t give it the rest of the milk?”
“No,” said Bruno. “It were a betterer reason. I tooked the saucer up ’cause it were so discontented!”
“It doesn’t look so to me,” said the Lord Chancellor. “What made you think it was discontented?”
“ ’Cause it grumbled in its throat.”
“Oh, Bruno!” cried Sylvie. “Why, that’s the way cats show they’re pleased!”
Bruno looked doubtful. “It’s not a good way,” he objected. “Oo wouldn’t say I were pleased, if I made that noise in my throat!”
“What a singular boy!” the Lord Chancellor whispered to himself: but Bruno had caught the words.
“What do it mean to say ‘a singular boy’?” he whispered to Sylvie.
“It means one boy,” Sylvie whispered in return. “And plural means two or three.”
“Then I’s welly glad I is a singular boy!” Bruno said with great emphasis. “It would be horrid to be two or three boys! P’raps they wouldn’t play with me!”
“Why should they?” said the Other Professor, suddenly waking up out of a deep reverie. “They might be asleep, you know.”
“Couldn’t, if I was awake,” Bruno said cunningly.
“Oh, but they might indeed!” the Other Professor protested. “Boys don’t all go to sleep at once, you know. So these boys—but who are you talking about?”
“He never remembers to ask that first!” the Professor whispered to the children.
“Why, the rest of me, a-course!” Bruno exclaimed triumphantly. “Supposing I was two or three boys!”
The Other Professor sighed, and seemed to be sinking back into his reverie; but suddenly brightened up again, and addressed the Professor. “There’s nothing more to be done now, is there?”
“Well, there’s the dinner to finish,” the Professor said with a bewildered smile: “and the heat to bear. I hope you’ll enjoy the dinner—such as it is; and that you won’t mind the heat—such as it isn’t.”
The sentence sounded well, but somehow I couldn’t quite understand it; and the Other Professor seemed to be no better off. “Such as it isn’t what?” he peevishly enquired.
“It isn’t as hot as it might be,” the Professor replied, catching at the first idea that came to hand.
“Ah, I see what you mean now!” the Other Professor graciously remarked. “It’s very badly expressed, but I quite see it now! Thirteen minutes and a half ago,” he went on, looking first at Bruno and then at his watch as he spoke, “you said ‘this Cat’s very kind to the Mouses.’ It must be a singular animal!”
“So it are,” said Bruno, after carefully examining the Cat, to make sure how many there were of it.
“But how do you know it’s kind to the Mouses—or, more correctly speaking, the Mice?”
“ ’Cause it plays with the Mouses,” said Bruno; “for to amuse them, oo know.”
“But that is just what I don’t know,” the Other Professor rejoined. “My belief is, it plays with them to kill them!”
“Oh, that’s quite a accident!” Bruno began, so eagerly, that it was evident he had already propounded this very difficulty to the Cat. “It ’splained all that to me, while it were drinking the milk. It said ‘I teaches the Mouses new games: the Mouses likes it ever so much.’ It said ‘Sometimes little accidents happens: sometimes the Mouses kills theirselves.’ It said ‘I’s always welly sorry, when the Mouses kills theirselves.’ It said—”
“If it was so very sorry,” Sylvie said, rather disdainfully, “it wouldn’t eat the Mouses after they’d killed themselves!”
But this difficulty, also, had evidently not been lost sight of in the exhaustive ethical discussion just concluded. “It said—” (the orator constantly omitted, as superfluous, his own share in the dialogue, and merely gave us the replies of the Cat) “It said ‘Dead Mouses never objecks to be eaten.’ It said ‘There’s no use wasting good Mouses.’ It said ‘Wifful—’ sumfinoruvver. It said ‘And oo may live to say “How much I wiss I had the Mouse that then I frew away!” ’ It said—.”
“It hadn’t time to say such a lot of things!” Sylvie interrupted indignantly.
“Oo doosn’t know how Cats speaks!” Bruno rejoined contemptuously. “Cats speaks welly quick!”
XXIII
The Pig-Tale
By this time the appetites of the guests seemed to be nearly satisfied, and even Bruno had the resolution to say, when the Professor offered him a fourth slice of plum-pudding, “I thinks three helpings is enough!”
Suddenly the Professor started as if he had been electrified. “Why, I had nearly forgotten the most important part of the entertainment! The Other Professor is to recite a Tale of a Pig—I mean a Pig-Tale,” he corrected himself. “It has Introductory Verses at the beginning, and at the end.”
“It can’t have Introductory Verses at the end, can it?” said Sylvie.
“Wait till you hear it,” said the Professor: “then you’ll see. I’m not sure it hasn’t some in the middle, as well.” Here
