'Struck him?' It was Graham who questioned, his face lighted by amusement. 'What for?'
'It was during a dispute over an animal—bien entendu. Monsieur le curé is irascible—and Mademoiselle Ludérac is not a favourite of his.—She is not pratiquante; though once a year she goes to High Mass with the old lady. It was his cat she had found; his own cat; very thin: soon to be a mother; and it had followed her crying. When Monsieur le curé met her, carrying it up to the Manoir, he was very angry. They came to bitter words. He tried, I believe, to take the cat from her. She resisted. Finally it was blows. All the village saw, though I, unfortunately, was absent on that day. The cat escaped in the scuffle and was never seen again; but Monsieur le curé always affirms that she managed to find it and to conceal—or kill it—up at the Manoir. He said that he had never possessed such a mouser. Madame Céleste, his housekeeper, depended on it. A cat does not catch mice well, Madame, if it is fed.' Monsieur Michon felt that Jill's sympathies were not with the curé.
'I hate their killing mice!' Jill exclaimed. 'I'm so glad it escaped. I'm glad she struck the curé, too.' And, laughing again, with a bow for a charming lady's extravagance, Monsieur Michon returned to his clients in the café below.
'How perfectly glorious!' Jill exclaimed. Her mood of apathy was gone—'It puts a new heart into one to hear anything like that. The starving cats of Buissac have a patron saint.'
