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He had a long start 'fore Jonadab and me woke up enough to think of chasing him. But we woke up fin'lly, and the way we flew round that catboat was a caution. I laid into them halyards, and I had the mainsail up to the peak afore Jonadab got the anchor clear of the bottom. Then I jumped to the tiller, and the Patience M. took after that skiff like a pup after a tomcat.
Owing to the mental perversity of its management, respectability is for it impossible. It is a social leper, a journalistic pariah. It is devoid of political principle as a thieving tomcat of conscience. It has no more stability than a bad smell in a simoon. It has deified and damned every statesman by turn.
He got up on all fours, and began to growl a little an' switch his tail. I knew then that it wouldn't be long before he came fer me, an' I took a fresh grip on the axe. I knew I didn't have a chance, but I figgered on puttin' my mark on the critter before he did fer me, anyway. "He crept closer an' closer, growlin' and spittin' away fer all the world like a big tomcat gettin' ready t' fight.
Would you," demanded Dora gravely, "would you say 'tomcat' before the minister?" This was a staggerer. Davy was not prepared for such a concrete example of the freedom of speech. But one did not have to be consistent with Dora. "Of course not," he admitted sulkily. "'Tomcat' isn't a holy word. I wouldn't mention such an animal before a minister at all." "But if you had to?" persisted Dora.
Did you ever see a man sneak out in the back yard and pick up a rock to throw at a tomcat that was sitting on a fence looking at him? He pretends he hasn't got a thing in his hand, and that the cat don't see him, and that he don't see the cat. That's the idea. Never drag her hand out where she'll have to take notice of it.
I asked, turning to her as she stood smiling bitterly by the window. For I knew that it would annoy her to be referred to. "Goes it not something like this?" And I hummed fairly enough: "'My true love hath my heart and I have his." * "And if it goes like that," said she, quickly, "it goeth like a tomcat mollrowing on the tiles in the middle of the night."
"Is it true that the White Lady has been seen since Mr. Glenthorpe was murdered?" "She's been heered, shure enough. Billy Backlog, who lives closest to the rise, was a-tellin' us in the Anchor bar that she woke him up two nights arter th' murder, a-yowlin' like an old tomcat, but Billy knew it worn't a cat it weer far more fearsome, wi gasps at th' end.
There is too much getting up and down stairs connected with them to please me. It puts one unpleasantly in mind of the tread-mill. The form of the ceiling offers too many facilities for bumping your head and too few for shaving. And the note of the tomcat as he sings to his love in the stilly night outside on the tiles becomes positively distasteful when heard so near.
Sleep on, deluded James, while I finish my cigar here on deck: dream of the forest and the trout brooks, and your neighbor Hodge and your old tomcat. By to-morrow night your mental horizon will be enlarged, and when you return to your castle in the wilderness there will be some new sensations tugging at your vitals. It will be a change for you, old man, and you needed one.
That everlastin' Cherub tomcat of Taylor's must have sneaked in with the boy when he brought the order from the store. When I shut the steak up in the back room I er er hum. . . ." "You did what?" "Eh? . . . Oh, I shut the cat up with it. I guess likely that's the end of the yarn, ain't it?" "Pretty nearly, I should say. What did you do to the cat?" "Hum. . . . Why, I let him go.
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