He felt it his duty to help
entertain Miss Booth's guests, always; and he more than once, at the
beginning of a reception, came into the drawing-room with a mouse in his
mouth as his offering to the occasion. Naturally enough "he caused the
stampede," as Mrs. Spofford puts it, "that Mr. Gilbert forgot to put
into 'Princess Ida' when her Amazons wild demonstrate their courage."
As one of Miss Booth's intimate friends, Mrs. Spofford was much at her
house and became early a devoted admirer of Muff's.
"His latter days," she says, "were rendered miserable by a little silky,
gray creature, an Angora named Vashti, who was a spark of the fire of
the lower regions wrapped round in long silky fur, and who never let him
alone one moment: who was full of tail-lashings and racings and leapings
and fury, and of the most demonstrative love for her mistress. Once I
made them collars with breastplates of tiny dangling bells, nine or ten;
it excited them nearly to madness, and they flew up and down stairs like
unchained lightning till the trinkets were taken off."
In a house full of birds Muff never touched one, although he was an
excellent mouser (who says cats have no conscience?). He was, although
so socially inclined toward his mistress's guests, a timid person, and
the wild back-yard cats filled him with terror.
"But as one must see something of the world," continues Mrs. Spofford,
"he used to jump from lintel to lintel of the windows of the block, if
by chance his own were left open, and return when he pleased.
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