The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories/”Puss-cat”

"Puss-cat"
It was during the month of May some nine years ago that the beginning of the events that concerned Puss-cat took place. I was living at the time on the green outskirts of a country town, and my dining-room at the back of the house opened on to a small garden framed in brick walls some five feet high. Breakfasting there one morning, I saw a large black and white cat, with a sharp but serious face, observing me with studied attention. Now at the time there was an interregnum, and my house was without a mistress (in the shape of a cat), and it at once struck me that I was being interviewed by this big and pleasing stranger, to see if I would do. So, since there is nothing that a prospective mistress likes less than premature familiarity on the part of the householder whom she may be thinking of engaging, I took no direct notice of the cat, but continued to eat my breakfast carefully and tidily. After a short inspection, the cat quietly withdrew without once looking back, and I supposed that I was dismissed, or that she had decided, after all, to keep on her present household.
In that I proved to be mistaken: she had only gone away to think about it, and next morning, and fo

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