"Cats," remarked Jephson to me, one afternoon, as we sat in the punt discussing the plot of our novel, "cats are animals for whom I entertain a very great respect. Cats and Nonconformists seem to me the only things in this world possessed of a practicable working conscience. Watch a cat doing something mean and wrong--if ever one gives you the chance; notice how anxious she is that nobody should see her doing it; and how prompt, if detected, to pretend that she was not doing it--that she was not even thinking of doing it--that, as a matter of fact, she was just about to do something else, quite different. You might almost think they had a soul. "Only this morning I was watching that tortoise-shell of yours on the houseboat. She was creeping along the roof, behind the flower-boxes, stalking a young thrush that had perched upon a coil of rope. Murder gleamed from her eye, assassination lurked in every twitching muscle of her body. As she crouched to spring, Fate, for once favouring the weak, directed her attention to myself, and she became, for the first time, aware of my presence. It acted upon her as a heavenly vision upon a Biblical criminal. In an instant she was a changed being. The wicked beast, going about seeking whom it might devour, had vanished. In its place sat a long-tailed, furry angel, gazing up into the sky with an expression that was one-third innocence and two-thirds admiration of the beauties of nature. What was she doing there, did I want to know? Why, could I not see, playing with a bit of earth. Surely I was not so evil- minded as to imagine she wanted to kill that dear little bird--God bless it. "Then note an old Tom, slinking home in the early morning, after a night spent on a roof of bad repute. Can you picture to yourself a living creature less eager to attract attention? 'Dear me,' you can all but hear it saying to itself, 'I'd no idea it was so late; how time does go when one is enjoying oneself. I do hope I shan't meet any one I know--very awkward, it's being so light.' "In the distance it sees a policeman, and stops suddenly within the shelter of a shadow. 'Now what's he doing there,' it says, 'and close to our door too? I can't go in while he's hanging about. He's sure to see and recognise me; and he's just the sort of man to talk to the servants.' "It hides itself behind a post and waits, peeping cautiously round the corner from time to time. The policeman, however, seems to have taken up his residence at that particular spot, and the cat becomes worried and excited. "'What's the matter with the fool?' it mutters indignantly; 'is he dead? Why don't he move on, he's always telling other people to. Stupid ass.' "Just then a far-off cry of 'milk' is heard, and the cat starts up in an agony of alarm. 'Great Scott, hark at that! Why, everybody will be down before I get in. Well, I can't help it. I must chance it.'