Not mine.... Dignity doesn't trouble _you_ any! My word! I'm often ashamed for you. You love everybody. You take all sorts of rebuffs without even raising your back. You're as pleasant and as banal as a public garden. TOBY-DOG Don't you believe it, you ill-bred cat! You think you know everything and you don't understand simple politeness. Frankly now, would you have me snarl at His or Her friends' heels,--well-dressed people who know my name (lots of people _I_ don't know know my name) and good-naturedly pull my ears? KIKI-THE-DEMURE I hate new faces. TOBY-DOG I don't love them either--whatever you say. I love--Her and Him. KIKI-THE-DEMURE And I, Him--and Her. TOBY-DOG Oh, I guessed _your_ preference long ago. There's a sort of secret understanding between you two-- KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_smiling mysteriously and abandoning himself to his reverie_) An understanding, yes--secret and profound. He rarely speaks but makes a noise like a mouse, scratching his paper. It's for Him I've treasured up my little heart, my precious cat's heart, and He, without words, has given me his. This exchange makes me happy and reserved. Now and then with that pretty, wayward, ruling instinct which makes us cats rivals of women, I try my power over him. When we are alone, I point my ears forward devilishly as a sign that I'm about to spring upon his scratching paper. The tap, tap, tap of my paws straight through pens and letters and everything scattered about, is addressed to him as well as the insistent miauling when I beg for liberty. "Hymn to the Door-Knob," He laughingly calls it, or "The Plaint of the Sequestered Cat." The tender contemplation of my inspiring eyes is for him alone; they weigh on his bent head, until the look I'm calling searches and meets mine in a shock of souls, so foreseen and so sweet, that I must needs close my lids to hide the exquisite shyness I feel. As for Her, she flutters about too much, often jostles me, holds my paws together and rocks me in the air, pets me in excited fashion, laughs aloud at me, imitates my voice too well-- TOBY-DOG, (_moved with indignation_) You're very hard to please! I certainly love Him; he's good and pretends not to see my faults, so that he won't have to scold, but She's the most beautiful thing in the world to me, the dearest and--the most difficult to understand. The sound of her step enchants me, her changeful eyes dispense happiness--and trouble. She's like Destiny itself, she never hesitates. Even torture from her hands--you know how She teases me? KIKI-THE-DEMURE Cruelly. TOBY-DOG No, not cruelly, but artfully. I never can tell what's coming next. This morning She bent down as if to speak to me, lifted one of my "tiny elephant's ears," as She calls them, and sent a sharp cry into it, which went to the very back of my brain. KIKI-THE-DEMURE Horrors! TOBY-DOG