Come Out of the Kitchen! A Romance

								

have ever loved an animal, how you feel to see it brutally kicked
downstairs."
"Preposterous," said Tucker, carefully indicating that he was addressing
Crane alone. "This is all preposterous. Tell the woman to keep her cat
where it belongs, and we'll have no more trouble."
"It hasn't troubled me, Tuck," answered Crane cheerfully. "But I am
curious to know whether or not you did kick him."
"The question seems to be, do you allow your servants to be insolent or
not?"
Crane turned to the cook.
"Mr. Tucker seems unwilling to commit himself on the subject of the
kick," he observed. "Have you any reason for supposing your cat was
kicked?"
"Yes," said Jane-Ellen. "The noise, the scuffle, the bad language, and
the way Willoughby ran into the kitchen with his tail as big as a fox's.
He is not a cat to make a fuss about nothing, I can tell you."
"I beg your pardon," said Crane, who was now evidently enjoying himself,
"but what did you say the cat's name is?"
"Willoughby."
Burton threw himself back in his chair.
"Willoughby!" he exclaimed, "how perfectly delightful. Now, you must
own, Tuck, prejudiced as you are, that that's the best cat name you ever
heard in your life."
But Tucker would not or could not respond to this overture, and so Crane
looked back at Jane-Ellen, who looked at him and said:
"Oh, do you like that name? I'm so glad, sir." And at this they smiled
at each other.
"Don't you think you had better go back to the kitchen, Jane-Ellen?"
said the butler sternly.
In the meantime, Tucker had lighted a cigar and had slightly recovered
his equanimity.
"As a matter of fact," he now said, in a deep, growling voice, "I did
not kick the creature at all--though, if I had, I should have considered
myself fully justified. I merely assisted its progress down the kitchen
stairs with a sort of push with my foot."
"It was a kick to Willoughby," said the cook, in spite of a quick effort
on Smithfield's part to keep her quiet.
"O Tuck!" cried Crane, "it takes a lawyer, doesn't it, to distinguish
between a kick and an assisting push with the foot. Well, Jane-Ellen,"
he went on, turning to her, "I think it's not too much to ask that
Willoughby be kept in the kitchen hereafter."
"I'm sure he has no wish to go where he's not wanted," she replied
proudly, and at this instant Willoughby entered exactly as before. All
four watched him in a sort of hypnotic inactivity. As before, he walked
with a slow, firm step to the chair in which Tucker sat, and, as before,
jumped upon his knee. But this time Tucker did not move. He only looked
at Willoughby and sneered.
Jane-Ellen, with the gesture of a mother rescuing an innocent babe from
massacre, sprang forward and snatched the cat up in her arms. Then she
turned on her heel and left the room. As she did so, the face of
Willoughby over her shoulder distinctly grinned at the discomfited
Tucker.
Not unnaturally, Tucker took what he could from the situation.