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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Monday — October 13, 1919

page 252
Monday
October 13, 1919

The weather has completely changed. It's chilly with a thick, thick fog and heavy downpour of rain. The sky is grey. It's like living inside a pearl to-day—very lovely, for a change….

Visitors last night. A very nice one. While I was waiting for the beans, I saw two honey-ball eyes looking at me from the hall. (The front door was open.) When they saw me, they flashed away, but I immediately said as much Wing language as I knew and went quietly to the door with my soup plate. A perfectly lovely tiny cat came in, gold, white and black, with a body rather like a rabbit. It simply bolted the stray pasta: then I gave it some milk, and it more than bolted that. Then it purred more loudly than any cat I've ever heard. Its purring machine must have been wound up until that moment. It sat under a chair singing like this for a little, and then fled into the night again. In my mind I called it “Gênet.”

I have just looked up. The fog has rolled away. The rain has stopped. The air smells of geraniums. Tomorrow the gardener comes for the day; the ground will be just right for sowing. There are carts going by. Yip-y-y-y-ip-yip, say the drivers and the bells go tring-tring-tring. The sea sounds as though it were somehow exquisitely refreshed by that mist; all the grass-blades are bowed down by a diamond. Oh dear, I'm awfully happy. It has been so lovely lying here in the rain. I feel renewed, too, and bowed down with a diamond, too … Look at the new leaves on the rose bushes—bright red. Were they there yesterday? There is one hidden frog here; he croaks every evening. He shall be invited to the festa in May….

Bites are still going strong. Does Tommy 1 know a fly—just like an ordinary house-fly in the face, that stings? It is here.

1 H. M. Tomlinson.