`But of course I can. Why not? He spoke in plain English. If he spoke French or German I'm sure I shouldn't know a word, though Daddy says next year I'm to begin to learn French. ..'
`Well, I never!' Jennie said, and sat down and blinked several times. `This wants thinking over. I never would have believed it. Then you really are a little boy …'
`But I told you I was,' Peter insisted.
`Of course you did,' Jennie admitted, `and I believed you, though not entirely. But now here's the proof for once and all. For if you were entirely a cat you wouldn't understand all of his language, and I must say—'
But what Jennie felt compelled to say at that point was lost, due to the fact that Mr. Grims returned to the door with a large flat saucer in one hand, a bottle of milk in the other.
`Here we are, then,' he said, and called to them—'Come, pusses. Nice fresh milk …' And he poured a generous helping into the saucer and held it up.
Peter's throat was so parched that he could hardly refrain from jumping for it, and he craned and stretched his neck and too uttered plaintive miaows.
Jennie said: `See if you can get him to give it to us outdoors. I'd rather not go inside if I can help it.'
They both cruised back and forth in front of the door, their tails straight up in the air, reaching and crying. But Mr. Grims said, `Come in if you want it, pusses. I'm just about to ‘ave me tea.'
Peter translated for Jennie, `He says we're to come inside if we want it.'
She signed and gave up. 'Ah well … come along then,' and treading cautiously over the sill and giving a sniff or two, she led the way with Peter following.
At once Mr. Grims closed the door behind them and set the saucer of milk on the floor where Peter with a little glad cry that was half a purr, hurled himself upon it, buried his face in it, and tried to suck it up. The next moment he was sneezing, coughing and choking with milk up his nose and into his eyes and his lungs full of it.
`Oh, oh, eh!' cried Mr. Grims as Peter backed away from the dish, `easy does it . . .'
Jennie said, `Oh dear!' and struggled not to laugh. `I didn't want to say anything, but I was afraid something like that would happen. Poor Peter … of course you can't drink milk that way. Horses can suck, but we have to lap it up.'
`Ugh-ick-kaCHOO!' Peter coughed and sneezed the last of the milk from his lungs and nose, and with the tears still running from his eyes from the effort, begged, `Show be how to do id, please, Jeddie! I dever tried …'
Jennie squatted down at the side of the saucer, her head just over it and lowered to the level of the milk. Then her little pink tongue emerged and vanished with incredible speed. The level of the milk in the saucer began to fall.
Mr. Grims of course misunderstood completely what was happening and laughed, `Ho, ho, ho! 'Ad to ‘ave a bit of a lesson in manners from your girl friend, eh, Whitey? 'Appens to the best of us. Now it's your turn.'
But when Peter tried to get a drink of milk from the saucer he had no better luck. This time all the liquid splashed on to the floor next to the saucer and not a drop could Peter get into his parched mouth. He was almost in despair when Jennie, who had been watching and studying him closely, cried:
`Oh! Now I know! You must curl your tongue under when you lap. We don't curl it up and around, but down, around and under.'
`But it doesn't make any sense,' Peter protested. `Curling it up makes it like a spoon, except it all runs out on to the floor. Turning it down under it would never hold anything. And besides, I'm sure I couldn't possibly do it, or learn. Our tongues just don't go that way.'
`Yours don't, but cats' do,' Jennie replied, `and whatever you once were, you are most certainly a cat now, so try it. Think of your tongue curling under, and see what happens.'
So Peter went at it again, and thought hard of curling his tongue downwards, and almost at once, to his great surprise, it was bending in that direction quite as though he had been drinking milk in that fashion all his life, and the cool, sweet drops were splashing into his mouth and running down his throat. He drank and drank as though he would never get enough, but suddenly, in the midst of drinking, he remembered what Jennie had said about cats not being greedy and sharing what they had with others, and felt a little ashamed, and so, with his thirst still not completely quenched, he backed away from the dish and said politely to Jennie: `Please, won't you have some more …?'
Jennie rewarded him with her most winning smile, saying, `How sweet of you, Peter! I don't mind if I do,' and therewith she returned to the dish and applied herself to it, giving Peter a chance to look around and see where he was.
The shack was most simply furnished with a wooden bed at the far end on which were some rumpled blankets, a few shelves containing some bare necessities. An unpainted and battered table was placed against one wall, with a small wireless set and an alarm clock with the glass broken out of its face standing on it. There was one rickety wooden chair with most of the slats out of the back. Right in the centre was a fat, potbellied stove, connected to a rusty pipe that went up through the roof. There was a fire in it now, a dented tea-kettle was singing on it over to one side, and the rest of the space on top of it was being used by Mr. Grims to finish the job of cooking his slice of liver that he was planning to have with his tea.
All of the furnishings in the place, Peter noticed, were poor and shabby and worn out, and yet the room looked as gay and cheerful as a palace, for everywhere there was a place or a ledge, shelf or level spot to put it, stood a flowerpot with growing flowers in it—geraniums of every kind and variety, from pure snow white to darkest glowing crimson, some the colour of apple-blossoms, pink and white, and others all shades of pink verging on salmon, puce-coloured ones and every variation of red from brick to blood to sunset. And the scent of them filled the shack and was stronger even than the odour of frying liver.
And while waiting for Jennie to finish the rest of her share of the milk, Peter wondered about Mr. Grims, who he had been and what kind of a life he had led, what had happened to him that he was compelled to spend the end of it as a watchman in a mean little shack, and what had become of his family. It was a game Peter liked to play, trying to guess what people were by looking at them—but he could not make up his mind about Mr. Grims except that he was very old and lonely and seemed to have nobody at all, for there were no pictures of any kind up on the wall.
Peter also remembered what Jennie had said, that Mr. Grims had offered her a home and had been trying to persuade her to come and live with him for months, and suddenly, he did not know why, his heart felt heavy and intolerably sad. He set to washing himself violently down his back to see if it would make him feel any better, as Jennie had said it would. He found that it did somewhat, but not entirely.
'Cleanin' up, eh? said Mr. Grims in his friendly voice. `Maybe you'd be wanting to wait a bit with that …' He moved over to the shelf, got the bread and cut himself several slices, poured the tea and transferred the liver from the skillet to one of his cracked plates. `It ain't often I have company for tea. I might be able to spare a bit o' liver for me pals. Share and share alike is my motto.' And with that he took a knife, divided the piece of liver exactly in two, and commenced to cut up one of the halves into very small pieces.
`He's going to give us liver,' Peter announced to Jennie with considerable excitement. Previously, when he had been living at home and he had been made by Nanny to eat liver to make sure he was getting enough vitamins, he hadn't liked it particularly, but now the smell, the look of it, and particularly the preparations sent him into a perfect fever of expectation and delight.
Jennie had a kind of pleased and satisfied smirk on her countenance as she too cruised back and forth near the table where the cutting was going on, as though to say: `You see, I told you this would be a little bit of all right.'