“That cat. Ah you, go away, go away,” and he gets up, his chair screeching along the red tiles. He throws his knife feebly, it misses Minnie and makes a clatter. He is out of the window in a flash, and Father sits down again. She puts the key under the bread. “I do hate cats, they frighten me so. There is something so dreadful about a cat, the way she seems to be looking at nothing. They don’t see flesh and blood, they see an abstract of everything. It’s horrible, horrible. Joan, you might keep her away from me, you know how I hate her. I can’t bear any cat. And in my condition. I think you might, yes, I do think you might.” “All right, but I don’t see what you mean. Minnie is such a darling, I don’t know why you hate her.” “Of course you don’t know cats as they really are. He is a devil, that cat.” Poor Father. Outside, on the right, a hen stalks reflectively, her head just over the weeds. Her eye is fixed, its stare is irritating, and the way she has of tilting her head to look for food is particularly precious. She goes forward slowly, often dipping out of sight to peck at something. All that can be seen of her is a dusty-brown colour, dull beside the fresh green round her, encouraged by the sun into a show of newness. He watches her one visible eye with irritation. “A chicken, at six in the morning, and loose in the garden. That shouldn’t be. A pen. I will build a pen for them some time. I will start to-day, but then there is no rabbit wire, and we can’t afford wire.” Yet hens in one’s garden. Degrading. Yet why not? They had to live, it was only fair to them that he should let them get food even if they were in his way, because they gave him food, and he did not deserve it. All the same, he did. And they were God’s creatures, even if they did come out of an egg, and even more because they did so. But was that true? No. Yes. He couldn’t see at all to-day. Scientists understood the egg, all except the life that entered it--and that was God; there, there you are. But an _egg._ He didn’t know. There was something. He did not know. No, not in an egg. He gets up and moves towards the door by the cupboard. “You’ll never build that pen, and you know it. Here, what are you going to the Gin Room for?” “Don’t use that tone to me. Can’t your Father go where he likes? Can’t he retire to his study for a little peace? You seem to have no--no feeling for your Father.”