“After all,” the Grey Cat continued, “atmospere is life. It is the influences under which we live that count in the long run. Now, outside”—she cocked one ear towards the half-opened door—“there is an absurd convention that rats and cats are, I won’t go so far as to say natural enemies, but opposed forces. Some such ruling may be crudely effective—I don’t for a minute presume to set up my standards as final—among the ditches; but from the larger point of view that one gains by living at the heart of things, it seems for a rule of life a little overstrained. Why, because some of your associates have, shall I say, liberal views on the ultimate destination of a sack of—er—middlings don’t they call them——” “Something of that sort,” said the Black Rat, a most sharp and sweet-toothed judge of everything ground in the mill for the last three years. “Thanks—middlings be it. _Why_, as I was saying, must I disarrange my fur and my digestion to chase you round the dusty arena whenever we happen to meet?” “As little reason,” said the Black Rat, “as there is for me, who, I trust, am a person of ordinarily decent instincts, to wait till you have gone on a round of calls, and then to assassinate your very charming children.” “Exactly! It has its humorous side though.” The Grey Cat yawned. “The miller seems afflicted by it. He shouted large and vague threats to my address, last night at tea, that he wasn’t going to keep cats who ‘caught no mice.’ Those were his words. I remember the grammar sticking in my throat like a herring-bone.” “And what did you do?” “What does one do when a barbarian utters? One ceases to utter and removes. I removed—towards his pantry. It was a _riposte_ he might appreciate.” “Really those people grow absolutely insufferable,” said the Black Rat. “There is a local ruffian who answers to the name of Mangles—a builder—who has taken possession of the outhouses on the far side of the Wheel for the last fortnight. He has constructed cubical horrors in red brick where those deliciously picturesque pigstyes used to stand. Have you noticed?” “There has been much misdirected activity of late among the humans. They jabber inordinately. I haven’t yet been able to arrive at their reason for existence.” The Cat yawned. “A couple of them came in here last week with wires, and fixed them all about the walls. Wires protected by some abominable composition, ending in iron brackets with glass bulbs. Utterly useless for any purpose and artistically absolutely hideous. What do they mean?” “Aaah! I have known _four_-and-twenty leaders of revolt in Faenza,” said the Cat, who kept good company with the boarders spending a summer at the Mill Farm. “It means nothing except that humans occasionally bring their dogs with them. I object to dogs in all forms.”