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Page 65
"Joan Valentine!" cried Judson, bringing his hands down on the
tablecloth with a bang. "I've just remembered it. That was the
name of the girl Freddie used to write the letters and poems to;
and that's who it is I've been trying all along to think you
reminded me of, Miss Simpson. You're the living image of
Freddie's Miss Joan Valentine."
Ashe was not normally a young man of particularly ready wit; but
on this occasion it may have been that the shock of this
revelation, added to the fact that something must be done
speedily if Joan's discomposure was not to become obvious to all
present, quickened his intelligence. Joan, usually so sure of
herself, so ready of resource, had gone temporarily to pieces.
She was quite white, and her eyes met Ashe's with almost a hunted
expression.
If the attention of the company was to be diverted, something
drastic must be done. A mere verbal attempt to change the
conversation would be useless. Inspiration descended on Ashe.
In the days of his childhood in Hayling, Massachusetts, he had
played truant from Sunday school again and again in order to
frequent the society of one Eddie Waffles, the official bad boy
of the locality. It was not so much Eddie's charm of conversation
which had attracted him--though that had been great--as the fact
that Eddie, among his other accomplishments, could give a
lifelike imitation of two cats fighting in a back yard; and Ashe
felt that he could never be happy until he had acquired this gift
from the master.
In course of time he had done so. It might be that his absences
from Sunday school in the cause of art had left him in later
years a trifle shaky on the subject of the Kings of Judah, but
his hard-won accomplishment had made him in request at every
smoking concert at Oxford; and it saved the situation now.
"Have you ever heard two cats fighting in a back yard?" he
inquired casually of his neighbor, Miss Willoughby.
The next moment the performance was in full swing. Young Master
Waffles, who had devoted considerable study to his subject, had
conceived the combat of his imaginary cats in a broad, almost
Homeric, vein. The unpleasantness opened with a low gurgling
sound, answered by another a shade louder and possibly more
querulous. A momentary silence was followed by a long-drawn note,
like rising wind, cut off abruptly and succeeded by a grumbling
mutter. The response to this was a couple of sharp howls. Both
parties to the contest then indulged in a discontented whining,
growing louder and louder until the air was full of electric
menace. And then, after another sharp silence, came war, noisy
and overwhelming.
Standing at Master Waffles' side, you could follow almost every
movement of that intricate fray, and mark how now one and now the
other of the battlers gained a short-lived advantage. It was a
great fight. Shrewd blows were taken and given, and in the eye of
the imagination you could see the air thick with flying fur.
Louder and louder grew the din; and then, at its height, it
ceased in one crescendo of tumult, and all was still, save for a
faint, angry moaning.
Such was the cat fight of Master Eddie Waffles; and Ashe, though
falling short of the master, as a pupil must, rendered it
faithfully and with energy.
To say that the attention of the company was diverted from Mr.
Judson and his remarks by the extraordinary noises which
proceeded from Ashe's lips would be to offer a mere shadowy
suggestion of the sensation caused by his efforts. At first,
stunned surprise, then consternation, greeted him. Beach, the
butler, was staring as one watching a miracle, nearer apparently
to apoplexy than ever. On the faces of the others every shade of
emotion was to be seen.
That this should be happening in the steward's room at Blandings
Castle was scarcely less amazing than if it had taken place in a
cathedral. The upper servants, rigid in their seats, looked at
each other, like Cortes' soldiers--"with a wild surmise."
The last faint moan of feline defiance died away and silence fell
on the room. Ashe turned to Miss Willoughby.
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