"Eh? Eh?" cries the starling, briskly looking up from his perch on top of the tabby. "Eh? What is it? What d"ye say? Tse, tse, tse."
Vee-Vee, the Pomeranian, changes his position and faces Shireen.
He looks at her for a minute, then leans his head on her footstool, but his eyes are still fixed upon her.
Shireen was Vee-Vee"s foster mother. Six years ago he came to the Castle, being then a mere dossil of cotton wool apparently, with a black dot for a nose and two black dots for eyes, so that Lizzie called him a little snow dog. Well, the little snow dog was only a fortnight old, and it happened just then that Shireen had had kittens, the whole of which had died. No they had _not_ been drowned, for Colonel Clarkson was too humane a man to think of depriving the p.u.s.s.y of all her family at once. But, I repeat, they died.
Then Shireen had taken pity on Vee-Vee, the little snow dog.
"You"re an orphan," she said, or seemed to say, for it is all the same thing. "You"re an orphan, and a miserable little mite at that; well, I have oceans of milk, so I shall rear you if you are so inclined."
The little snow dog was so inclined, and Shireen took him over at once, and till this day, next to his dear master, Vee-Vee loved his foster mother.
"Just look," said Mrs Clarkson, "how fondly Vee-Vee is gazing at his foster mother!"
"Oh," cried Lizzie, "I know what Vee-Vee wants. He wants her to tell him a story."
"Ah! indeed," said Colonel Clarkson, "she well may tell her friends a story, for few cats have had a more adventurous life than she."
Shireen patted Vee-Vee on the nose with her paw, but the nails were sheathed, then she proceeded to tell her strange story.
Cats and all the lower animals, or undergraduates, have a language of their own, you know, but I have made myself master of it, and I shall try to translate what Shireen said. Only I must take a new chapter to it.
CHAPTER THREE.
"OH! KILL ME QUICK AND PUT ME OUT OF PAIN."
The story of my life? Was that what you asked me for, my little foster son? I see Warlock p.r.i.c.king one ear. He is going to listen too, is he?
Ah! well, my friends, my life has been a very long and a very eventful one, for I have travelled very far and seen much, and you all know I am getting old. d.i.c.k is laughing and chuckling to himself. Of course, he thinks that I am centuries old, but that is only because he himself is so young.
Chammy, the chameleon, looks down at Shireen with one of his droll eyes, while he watches a fly on the ceiling with the other. He holds up a hand, too, opening and shutting it as he remarks--
"Don"t give yourself airs about your age, Shireen. Look at me. It is a hundred years yesterday since I came to life again."
"Came to life again, Chammy," says Warlock, winking to d.i.c.k. "Why, what are you telling us?"
"The truth," said the chameleon. "One thousand one hundred years ago yesterday--and it doesn"t seem very long to look back to--after a good dinner on b.u.t.terflies I retired into the hollow of a young banian tree in an African forest to have a nap. I had dined heartily, and I slept long, so long that the tree grew up over me. And it grew and grew and grew for a thousand years till it became the most wonderful tree in all the forest. But one day it was rent in twain by a lightning flash, and--I awoke and crawled out and found a moth and swallowed it."
"Tse, tse, tse!" said d.i.c.k.
"We can"t be expected to swallow your story though, Chammy," said Warlock.
Chammy did not reply, for the fly had come down from the ceiling, and settling in front of the chameleon began to wash its face.
Chammy turned both eyes in towards his nose, and focused the fly, then his mouth slowly opened, and presently out darted a long round tongue, more like a slug than anything else, and the fly never finished washing its face.
Well, as I was saying, continued Shireen, when interrupted by our dear and excessively old friend Chammy, I am getting on! Twenty years, you know, children, is a long, long life for a cat, if not for a chameleon, and oh! what ups and downs I have seen in that time!
My very earliest recollections take me back to scenes in beautiful Persia, "the land of the lion and the sun."
"Some day," said d.i.c.k, the starling, making pretence to bathe himself in tabby"s glittering fur--"some day I mean to fly there. None of you fellows have wings, so you can"t do that sort of thing. It would take poor old dummy yonder fully another thousand years to wriggle that length. Better he should go to sleep again in an old log of wood!"
"Yes," continued d.i.c.k, while Shireen sat thoughtfully washing her face and gazing at the fire. "I shall go to Persia. I had quite a long talk the other day with the cuckoo about it. He says that Persia in the South is no end of a nice place, with flies and things to be found all throughout the winter. He says he wouldn"t come here at all if it wasn"t that there is less danger in this country in summer-time to his eggs, and the climate is more bracing for the mother and the young. The Mother Cuckoo, you must remember, is very delicate, and wouldn"t think of rearing her own family, so she employs a nurse, or maybe three or four nurses; and the more fools they, _I_ say, for accepting the situation, for they toil away all the best part of the summer, leaving their own little families to starve and never get a thank-you for their pains. But Mother Cuckoo is a knowing old bird; she finds a nest nicely hidden--it may be a robin"s, it may be a t.i.t-lark"s, or a water wagtail"s--and then a conversation begins at once.
""Nice little place you"ve got here," says Mother Cuckoo to the little bird, smiling all down both sides of her head as she speaks, for you know, Warlock, you couldn"t make a cuckoo"s mouth much bigger without cutting her head off. "Nice little place!"
""Yes," says the little bird, feeling much flattered.
""And such a cosy warm well-lined nest!"
""Yes," says the little bird again, "my husband and I did that."
""How clever. And the nest is so well hidden!"
""Oh, yes, that is the best of it. There are no cats about, and wicked schoolboys would never think of looking here for a nest."
""It isn"t a very large nest!"
""Oh, it is big enough for our little family."
""Let me see," says Mother Cuckoo, "you have three eggs laid already.
How clever of you!"
""Yes, and I"m going to lay another."
""Your husband"s from home to-day, isn"t he?"
""He has gone to the woods for a certain kind of beetle that I"ve set my heart upon."
""Oh, dear!" says sly Mother Cuckoo, "I do feel so faint; all over of a tremble. Do, like a dear little mite, go and find my husband. He is in the copse down by the miller"s pond. I"ll sit here and keep your eggs warm till you return."
"But the little bird never finds Father Cuckoo, and when she comes back, lo! old Mother Cuckoo has gone, but the sly bird has left an egg bigger and different from any in the nest. And that egg seems to throw a glamour over the little bird; she feels compelled to hatch it, and to rear the little one when it comes out to the neglect of her own family, for the young cuckoo is such a powerful eater that it takes both the little bird and her husband all their time to gather insects for it and stuff them down its gaping throat, and--"
"Now, d.i.c.k," cried Warlock, "if you"re quite done we would like to hear Shireen"s story; you may fly to Persia with the cuckoos in August if you like, and--"
"And perhaps never come home again," said Tabby; "don"t you go, d.i.c.k, don"t you go."
From all I can recollect of Persia, said Shireen, it is a very beautiful country in summer-time, although away high up in the mountain fastnesses of the North, terrible snowstorms sometimes blow, and here dwell tribes and clans of wild Persian Highlanders that are at war with all the world.
Yet, strange to say, these wild men are kind to their cats, and p.u.s.s.y in these regions is looked upon as quite one of the family.
But it was not in these wilds that I first saw the light of day, or any other light, children, but far away in what my mother called the sunny South.
"Much game there, mother?" asked Warlock, p.r.i.c.king both his ears.
"I"ll come to that presently, Warlock, you mustn"t interrupt, you know."
My very earliest recollections then, you must know, are all centred in my mother. This is only natural. Besides, my mother was very beautiful indeed. My little brother and I--we were both born at the same time-- disagreed about many matters connected with domestic life and family arrangements, but we were both of the same opinion concerning mother"s beauty. I was very young when I first opened my eyes, but I have only to close them again now, and mother rises up before me in all her loveliness. White were the snows that capped the jagged hills of the Zarda Koo, no snows could be whiter, but more spotless still, I thought, was the coat of my dam. Blue were the rifts between the clouds in the autumn, but bluer and brighter my mother"s eyes. Then every movement she made was graceful and easy. Was it any wonder that brother and I loved her, or that we sometimes fought for the best place in her arms?