'What is all this you are trying to tell me?' she said, when I came in one day full of the adventure of the tame rabbit which had insulted me. Kitty had brought it out on the lawn to be introduced to me and we had just rubbed noses, when it suddenly turned round and tossed up its heels, all over mould, in my face and scuttled off. Ill-bred thing! I tried to tell Them, but it was no use. Rosamond said, 'What is it all about, little talking cat? Auntie May, just listen, he is bubbling away with conversation, and most awfully interested in himself and what has happened to him. I _wish_ I could understand.' CHAPTER VIII A MAN WHO HATED ME Up to now I had been kept as much as possible with Beatrice; but when she was better and able to come down, I realised that there were three children in the house--my old friend Rosamond, of course, and two others, Amerye and Kitty, whom I had hardly seen at all. Heaps of people kept cropping up. There was Miss Grueber, their governess, and Annie, their schoolroom-maid. After Beatrice had been downstairs and 'on the sofa' a week, her mother-in-law, Tom's mother, a Mrs. Gilmour, came, and I scratched her. She made the most fearful fuss, and I am ready to declare that my claw was not shot out with any degree of violence, nor did it penetrate more than the eighth of an inch into her hand. But she said her arm would mortify. She complained of a twisting sort of pain reaching up as far as her elbow, and wore her arm in a sling to keep the blood out of it. She said there was poison in cat's nails as well as in that of human beings, only their nails don't affect you unless that human being is in a rage. She went about with a 'poor-poor' face, and requested that I might be removed if I happened to be in the room when she came into it. I often hid when she was there, for though I disliked her and would not ever go near her again, or play with her bobbly fringe or the ends of her fur stole, I found her amusing and liked to listen to the absurd things she said and the stories she told, although I hardly believed them. She said she herself was indifferent to cats if they didn't come near her, but there were people who fainted away if a cat came into the room where they were. That I afterwards had reason to know was true, for it coloured my whole life. One day Beatrice was downstairs lying on the sofa in a sweet lace thing with lots of fascinating frills to play with. I refrained because she had been ill. She told us she had put on this lovely _négligée_ because Mr. Fox was coming to tea. 'Who is Mr. Fox?' asked Auntie May.