Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 3 (1924-11).djvu/101

100 di Monserreau, asleep in a big armchair by the fireplace. She had crouched on her knees, with her hands out on the arm of the chair and her chin on her outstretched hands, for all the world like a comfortable pussy-cat.

I said to Cousin Edgar: "Here’s your cat," and laughed.

He looked at Vida closely. Then he said softly to me. "Althea, you are speaking more to the point than is your wont." (You know how he loves to tease me, mother.) "Introduce me to the pussy," said he.

I waked Vida. She was terribly embarrassed to have been seen in such an unconventional pose, but she told me afterward that she liked Cousin Edgar more than any other man she'd ever met. I think he liked her, too, although, of course, he didn't say much to me about it.

Vida asked him, almost at once, if he didn't have another cat-chain like mine. She'd taken a tremendous fancy to it, she said.

"Perhaps you can prevail upon Althea to give you hers. If you can, I'll get her something else to take its place."

At this suggestion of his, Vida turned imploring eyes upon me. Mother, I was disturbed. I thought of what had happened to Natalie and to Miss Poore, and I wondered if something horrible would happen to me if I refused to give Vida my chain. So I just put it to her point blank.

"What will happen to me if I don't give my chain to you, Vida?"

"Nothing to you, Althea, darling. I could never be really angry at you," she whispered.

"Then please don't ask me to give up my chain," I begged.

I looked back as I went from the room with Cousin Edgar, and her eyes were on me in the most wistful way. Poor Vida!

I wonder what the attraction is? Cousin Edgar is remaining here tor an indefinite visit, he says. I do hope he hasn't fallen in love with Alma Henning: I simply cannot bear that girl. I suppose he won't ask my advice, though, if he has fallen in love with one of the girls. Belle Bragg is wild over him, and Natalie thinks him scrumptious.

He has old Peter with him and is stopping at the little hotel in Pine Valley.

The same to the same:

I suppose I ought to tell you some things I've hardly dared write before because they are so—well, so extraordinary. I've been afraid you might think something the matter with my brain, because I'd been studying too hard. Cousin Edgar says it is in good condition and my head straight on my shoulders and to write you the whole thing, exactly what I thought about it.

Mother, there is something uncanny about Vida di Monserreau. I told you how catlike she was at times, and how she loves sitting in the dark, or prowling about the room in the dark.

The other day I came into the room ten minutes before lights-out. The room was empty when I turned on the light. But as I went to my desk, a great tortoise-shell cat was stretching itself lazily in the armchair where Vida loves to sit, near the window.

Like a flash Miss Poore's experience passed through my mind and I started for the door. As I got to the hall, I turned around, and—mother, believe me or not—there wasn't a sign of a cat. But sitting in the arm-chair, staring at me with those queer yellow eyes of hers, was Vida di Monserreau.

I sat down on a chair near the door and breathed hard for a moment. Then I said, "My gracious, Vida, how you startled me! I didn't see you when I came in. What happened to the cat?”