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explaining fully. But when the butler ushered him into the
drawing-room only Lady Widdrington, her mother Mrs Pulteney-Banks, and her cat
Percy were present. Lady Widdrington shook hands, Mrs Pulteney-Banks bowed from
the arm-chair in which she sat swathed in shawls, but when Lancelot advanced
with the friendly intention of tickling the cat Percy under the right ear, he
gave the young man a cold, evil look out of the corner of his eye and, backing
a pace, took an inch of skin off his hand with one well-judged swipe of a
steel-pronged paw.
    Lady
Widdrington stiffened.
    ‘I’m afraid
Percy does not like you,’ she said in a distant voice.
    ‘They know,
they know!’ said Mrs Pulteney-Banks darkly. She knitted and purled a moment,
musing. ‘Cats are cleverer than we think,’ she added.
    Lancelot’s
agony was too keen to permit him even to cough dryly. He sank into a chair and
surveyed the little company with watering eyes.
    They looked to
him a hard bunch. Of Mrs Pulteney-Banks he could see little but a cocoon of
shawls, but Lady Widdrington was right out in the open, and Lancelot did not
like her appearance. The chatelaine of Widdrington Manor was one of those
agate-eyed, purposeful, tweed-clad women of whom rural England seems to have a
monopoly. She was not unlike what he imagined Queen Elizabeth must have been in
her day. A determined and vicious specimen. He marvelled that even a mutual
affection for cats could have drawn his gentle uncle to such a one.
    As for Percy,
he was pure poison. Orange of body and inky-black of soul, he lay stretched out
on the rug, exuding arrogance and hate. Lancelot, as I have said, was tolerant
of toughness in cats, but there was about this animal none of Webster’s jolly,
whole-hearted, swashbuckling rowdiness. Webster was the sort of cat who would
charge, roaring and ranting, to dispute with some rival the possession of a
decaying sardine, but there was no more vice in him than in the late John L.
Sullivan. Percy, on the other hand, for all his sleek exterior, was mean and
bitter. He had no music in his soul, and was fit for treasons, stratagems and
spoils. One could picture him stealing milk from a sick tabby.
    Gradually the
pain of Lancelot’s wound began to abate, but it was succeeded by a more
spiritual discomfort. It was plain to him that the recent episode had made a
bad impression on the two women. They obviously regarded him with suspicion and
dislike. The atmosphere was frigid, and conversation proceeded jerkily.
Lancelot was glad when the dressing-gong sounded and he could escape to his
room.
    He was
completing the tying of his tie when the door opened and the Bishop of
Bongo-Bongo entered.
    ‘Lancelot, my
boy!’ said the Bishop.
    ‘Uncle!’ cried
Lancelot.
    They clasped
hands. More than four years had passed since these two had met, and Lancelot
was shocked at the other’s appearance. When last he had seen him, at the dear
old deanery, his Uncle Theodore had been a genial, robust man who wore his
gaiters with an air. Now, in some subtle way, he seemed to have shrunk. He
looked haggard and hunted. He reminded Lancelot of a rabbit with a good deal on
its mind.
    The Bishop had
moved to the door. He opened it and glanced along the passage. Then he closed
it and tip-toeing back, spoke in a cautious undertone.
    ‘It was good
of you to come, my dear boy,’ he said.
    ‘Why, of
course I came,’ replied Lancelot heartily. ‘Are you in trouble of some kind,
Uncle Theodore?’
    ‘In the
gravest trouble,’ said the Bishop, his voice a mere whisper. He paused for a
moment. ‘You have met Lady Widdrington?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then when I
tell you that, unless ceaseless vigilance is exercised, I shall undoubtedly
propose marriage to her, you will appreciate my concern.’
    Lancelot
gaped.
    ‘But why do
you want to do a potty thing like that?’
    The Bishop
shivered.
    ‘I do not want
to do it, my boy,’ he said. ‘Nothing is further from my wishes. The salient
point,