'I am much obliged to you for confounding me with your feline pets,' remarked Mrs. Gilmour. 'And now I think, Beatrice, as I am rather tired, I will say good-night. Miss Graham, excuse my remarking it, but I do think you have cat on the brain!' 'She's offended,' said Beatrice, 'and now she'll cut me off with a shilling. I must say, May dear, that for a novelist you are about the most tactless person I ever knew.' CHAPTER IX MY FIRST MOUSE Mrs. Gilmour was never very nice to Auntie May after that. She began to be nasty again at breakfast. Auntie May was reading her letters, and one of them was from Mrs. Dillon. '"Admiral Togo,"' Auntie May read out, '"_is the chief joy of my life_." Oh listen, all of you, for you will be so much amused; I am not, for of course it seems to me the obvious and natural thing to do. "He is coming with me to my winter quarters in South Africa."' 'And Mr. Dillon--is he being left behind?' said Mrs. Gilmour. 'Though after all, what is a husband in comparison with a cat? And she is taking a hired attendant for him, and possibly a chef, and engaging a private cabin for him--of _course_?' 'There isn't a Mr. Dillon,' said Auntie May, shaking with laughter, 'but as far as the cabin goes, that is precisely what she _is_ doing. She says so.' Mrs. Gilmour looked a little put out for a moment, then she said: 'I don't suppose they would admit the young gentleman except on those conditions. Well, well, if people have absurd fancies they must pay for them. Your friend seems to have plenty of good money to throw away!' Auntie May said she would send a letter of directions to Mrs. Dillon's maid, to tell her how to feed the kitten on the voyage. Forgetting apparently that Mrs. Gilmour was there still, she went on: 'When medicine has to be given, I prefer it in the form of powders.' Mrs. Gilmour pretended to be interested in order to be nastier afterwards. 'To liquids they close their throats somehow, and it runs out of the corner of their mouths. As for giving pills! Petronilla shoots the pill several feet into the air, and the first thing that tells me she hasn't swallowed it is the noise it makes as it hits the ceiling. Poor Pet! She appears to think it funny.' 'So do I!' said Beatrice, screaming with laughter. 'I think I see Petronilla, with her Burne-Jones angel expression, staring up to the ceiling to see if she has hit the bull's eye, and you in despair because you can't get the pills driven into her.' 'Has your cat had any _very_ alarming illnesses?' inquired Mrs. Gilmour, with a very perfidious expression, but Auntie May was quite taken in by her appearance of interest. 'Let me see, Petronilla has had gastritis, and she has once ricked her back jumping backwards, and then she had to have massage--' 'Did it come expensive?' inquired the old lady.