Chapter 38 - Page 2

cats."

"About cats?" said Mr. Twist, uncertainly.

"Yes," said Anna-Rose, stroking the cat's stomach faster and carefully keeping her face hidden from him. "About how wise and wonderful they are."

"Well then if that's all, you can go on with that presently and come and talk to me now."

"You see," said Anna-Rose, not heeding this, "they're invariably twins, and more than twins, for they're often fours and sometimes sixes, but still they sit in the sun quietly all their lives and don't mind a bit what their--what their twins do--"

"Ah," said Mr. Twist. "Now I'm getting there."

"They don't mind a bit about anything. They just clean their whiskers and they purr. Perhaps it's that that comforts them. Perhaps if I--if I had whiskers and a--and a purr--"

The cat leaped suddenly to her feet and shook herself violently. Something hot and wet had fallen on her beautiful stomach.

Anna-Rose made a little sound strangers might have taken for a laugh as she put out her arms and caught her again, but it was a sound so wretched, so piteous in the attempt to hide away from him, that Mr. Twist's heart stood still. "Oh, don't go," she said, catching at the cat and hugging her tight, "I can't let you go--" And she buried her face in her fur, so that Mr. Twist still couldn't see it.

"Now that's enough about the cat," he said, speaking very firmly. "You're coming with me." And he stooped and picked her up, cat and all, and set her on her feet.

Then he saw her face.

"Good God, Anna-Rose!" he exclaimed.

"I did try not to show you," she said; and she added, taking shelter behind her pride and looking at him as defiantly as she could out of eyes almost closed up, "but you mustn't suppose just because I happen to--to seem as if I'd been crying that I--that I'm minding anything."

"Oh no," said Mr. Twist, who at sight of her face had straightway forgotten about himself and his longings and his proposals, and only knew that he must comfort Christopher. "Oh no," he said, looking at her aghast, "I'm not supposing we're minding anything, either of us."

He took her by the arm. Comfort Christopher; that's what he had got to do. Get rid as quickly as possible of that look of agony--yes, it was downright agony--on her face.

He thought he guessed what she was thinking and feeling; he thought--he was pretty sure--she was thinking and feeling that her beloved Columbus had gone from her, and gone to a stranger, in a day, in a few hours, to a stranger she had never even seen, never even heard of; that her Columbus had had secrets from her, had been doing things behind her back; that she had had perfect faith and trust in her twin, and now was