Читать книгу First the Blade. A Comedy of Growth онлайн

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And then the house next door was taken at last, by a ramshackle, elastic family with a studio, who hung out their washing in the front garden as well as the back. We did not call upon them. But Topaz did. Call? She adopted them!

She, who would not be handled, patted even, I have seen, her claws full of bark, hauled from a tree by her tail and carried limply, head downwards, under the arm of the youngest son; or rolling on her back in the gravel, ecstatically appreciative of Mrs. Next Door’s thimble under her ear. She sat about on their shoulders, their laps, wherever she could get: caught their mice, drank their skim milk, allowed them to wash her in one bath with the terrier pup. Why? Heaven knows! She liked them. They were her sort. Yet I am sure we were a much nicer family than the people next door.

She never quite forgot us: was even, as if in apology, a shade more friendly than before. For a long time, indeed, she paid a daily call of courtesy, sitting a dignified half-hour on what had been her chair, before retiring again to her spiritual home; but one always felt that she did it as a matter of duty. And when the Next Doors moved on, her visits ceased. We missed her, just a little, and made half-hearted inquiries, but there it ended. The Next Doors must have taken her with them. At any rate we never set eyes on Topaz again.