“I’ve brought Mimi,” she said. “I want you to see what a darling he is.” Mimi, a Persian, all orange on the top and snow white underneath, climbed her breast to hang flattened out against her shoulder, long, the great plume of his tail fanning her. She swung round to show the innocence of his amber eyes and the pink arch of his mouth supporting his pink nose. “I want you to see my mignonette,” said Harriett. They stood together by the crushed ring where Mimi had made his bed. The pretty girl said she was sorry. “But, you see, we _can’t_ restrain him. I don’t know what’s to be done.... Unless you kept a cat yourself; then you won’t mind.” “But,” Harriett said, “I don’t like cats.” “Oh, why not?” Harriett knew why. A cat was a compromise, a substitute, a subterfuge. Her pride couldn’t stoop. She was afraid of Mimi, of his enchanting play, and the soft white fur of his stomach. Maggie’s baby. So she said, “Because they destroy the beds. And they kill birds.” The pretty girl’s chin burrowed in Mimi’s neck. “You _won’t_ throw stones at him?” she said. “No, I wouldn’t _hurt_ him.... What did you say his name was?” “Mimi.” Harriett softened. She remembered. “When I was a little girl I had a cat called Mimi. White Angora. Very handsome. And your name is----” “Brailsford. I’m Dorothy.” Next time, when Mimi jumped on the lupins and broke them down, Dorothy came again and said she was sorry. And she stayed to tea. Harriett revealed herself. “My father was Hilton Frean.” She had noticed for the last fifteen years that people showed no interest when she told them that. They even stared as though she had said something that had no sense in it. Dorothy said, “How nice.” _“Nice?”_ “I mean it must have been nice to have him for your father.... You don’t mind my coming into your garden last thing to catch Mimi?” Harriett felt a sudden yearning for Dorothy. She saw a pleasure, a happiness, in her coming. She wasn’t going to call, but she sent little notes in to Dorothy asking her to come to tea. Dorothy declined. But every evening, towards bedtime, she came into the garden to catch Mimi. Through the window Harriett could hear her calling: “Mimi! Mimi!” She could see her in her white frock, moving about, hovering, ready to pounce as Mimi dashed from the bushes. She thought: “She walks into my garden as if it was her own. But she won’t make a friend of me. She’s young, and I’m old.” She had a piece of wire netting put up along the wall to keep Mimi out. “That’s the end of it,” she said. She could never think of the young girl without a pang of sadness and resentment. Fifty-five. Sixty. In her sixty-second year Harriett had her first bad illness. It was so like Sarah Barmby. Sarah got influenza and regarded it as a common cold and gave it to Harriett who regarded it as a common cold and got pleurisy.