The Pretty Lady's mother talked almost incessantly when she was in the
house. One of her habits was to get on the window-seat outside and
demand to be let in. If she was not waited upon immediately, she would,
when the door was finally opened, stop when halfway in and scold
vigorously. The tones of her voice and the expression of her face were
so exactly like those of a scolding, vixenish woman that she caused many
a hearty laugh by her tirades.
Thomas Erastus, however, seldom utters a sound, and at the rare
intervals when he condescends to purr, he can only be heard by holding
one's ear close to his great, soft sides. But he has the most remarkable
ways. He will open every door in the house from the inside; he will even
open blinds, getting his paw under the fastening and working patiently
at it, with his body on the blind itself, until the hook flies back and
it finally opens. One housekeeper trained him to eat his meat close up
in one corner of the kitchen. This custom he kept up after she went
away, until new and uncommonly frisky kittens annoyed him so that his
place was transferred to the top of an old table. When he got hungry in
those days, however, he used to go and crowd close up in his corner and
look so pathetically famished that food was generally forthcoming at
once. Thomas was formerly very much devoted to the lady who lived next
door, and was as much at home in her house as in ours.
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