I did not want to see any one of them again except the theatrical cat, who was a jolly sort of cheerful beast. I forgot to say there was a Manx cat there, without a tail; its mother had bitten it off in a temper when it was young, I suppose. It was an awkward creature, and the white cat spat at him and told him he wasn't the only cat on the tiles. He had been making himself very civil to her, but she was a very unconventional young lady, I was told, and if she liked you she did, and if she didn't she wouldn't stop in the same room with you, and thickened all the way down when she was forced to obey. [Illustration: I DID NOT WANT TO SEE ANY ONE OF THEM AGAIN.] Auntie May shouldered her own two, and said Goodbye. She did not get a very good hold, and we both of us oozed out under her arm in the square garden, and she was in a terrible way. We teased her a little bit, but we saw the poor thing was tired, so came back to her. CHAPTER XIII CATAPUK About the spring time, when the grass in the square garden was not so often wet and the birds made more noise there and the nests were more plentiful, Auntie May seemed not so very well. She always had the hardest knee in the house to sit on, though it was the nicest knee, and now her fingers grew so thin that the rings began to drop off them, and then _we_ were accused of having taken them. I believe it was for this reason that she suddenly began to say that she must go away. 'And leave us?' we said, when she told us. 'I don't think I can make up my mind to leave you, dears,' she said, just as if she had understood our remarks, which of course she did not. 'Fancy waking up in the morning all alone by myself instead of being waked by one of you putting your paw in my mouth! I can't picture it. No, I'll stay here and die.' 'Nonsense!' her father would say. 'You must live, dear, if not for my sake, for the sake of the cats. Let us think of something to amuse you and make you forget your family for a while. Why not go up to see Beatrice?' 'No, I don't want to go and stay with Beatrice.' She and Beatrice were cross with each other just then, I happened to know, and truly Auntie May's temper was not exactly even nowadays. She had been known to say that we got on her nerves, and that there were too many of us. We knew she was out of sorts by that alone. 'Why not try Folkestone with your Aunt Cecilia?' 'An old cat!' 'What about Mrs. Gilmour at Bournemouth?' 'Another!' It was easy to see she was ill. 'Then come with me to the Riviera?' 'That would be lovely, but, dear Daddy, I could not possibly take you away from your Academy picture.' 'Then,' said the poor old man in desperation, 'go to America and read passages from your own works and make a fortune.' He was at his wit's end or he would not have proposed anything so absurd and improper as that. He said no more, but I sometimes saw him watching her with tears in his eyes.