The washing, as soon as she made
certain no one saw her, gave place to another manoeuvre. She stretched
as though her bones were of the very best elastic. Gathering herself
together, she arched her round body till it resembled a toy balloon
straining to rise against the pull of four thin ropes that held it
tightly to the ground. Then, unable to float off through the air, as
she had expected, she slowly again subsided. The balloon deflated. She
licked her chops, twitched her whiskers, curled her tail neatly round
her two front paws--and grinned complacently. She waited before that
extinguished fire of peat as though she had never harboured a single
evil purpose in all her days. 'A saucer of milk,' she gave the world
to understand, c is the only thing _I_ care about.' Her smile of
innocence and her attitude of meek simplicity proclaimed this to the
universe at large. 'That's me,' she told the darkness, 'and I don't
care a bit who knows it.' She looked so sleek and modest that a mouse
need not have feared her. But she did not add, 'That's what I mean the
world to think,' for this belonged to the secret life cats never talk
about. Those among humans might divine it who could, and welcome. They
would be admitted. But the rest of the world were regarded with mere
tolerant disdain.
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