It grew colder and colder. Gwendoline got a shawl, and we turned up our coat-collar as unobtrusively as possible and put our hands in our pockets. The lady became absent-minded, and in spite of ourself our thoughts wandered to tall glasses with something hot in them and pieces of lemon floating around.
There is no use dragging out this account of the disaster. The whole thing simply fizzled out. A masterful man might perhaps have saved the day—or the evening, to be accurate—by seizing the lady, slamming her against his throbbing heart, and warming her up at the fire of his own ardor. But we let the psychological moment shiver by. She passed us with a curt nod on the street next day, and six months later was married to a chap in the bank. Her father took him into the business at once—she was an only child.
Do you wonder we hate furnaces?
MIKE
Mike
Cats have character. You may not like them, but you have to respect them. They feel no affection, and they make no pretence of it. If they rub up against your leg and purr, it is because they like the stuff your trousers are made of—yes, madam, we are speaking for ourself!
Now, it is just the opposite with dogs. You like dogs, but usually you don't respect them. They are not sufficiently self-centred and independent. They lack poise and that repose of manner which is the unfailing sign of the aristocrat.
Dogs are too fond of you—in itself an evidence of a lack of discrimination—and too demonstrative. One of the meanest-souled human weasels that ever slunk home from his office in the evening to be nasty to his wife and slap the children has a dog. And that dog watches for him for hours, and comes tearing down the street to greet him, barking his head off and turning somersaults in delirious joy.
Now, who ever saw a cat come tumbling and barking down the street to greet anyone? The finest and ablest man in the Empire—Lloyd George, Haig, or even Sir Arthur Currie or the virtuous Newton Wesley Rowell—couldn't get a flicker of a cat's whisker, if they came home after six months' absence all covered with medals. The only arrival to make a cat sit right up and mew in salutation is the milkman in the morning.