In any case, the incident served, as I have said, to drive the nail up
to the head and to make Mr. Hutton and Mr. Townsend feel that they had
not been rash in their choice, and had got a man who could do literature
as well as politics.
Not being without a sense of superstition, at any rate where cats are
concerned, and a devout lover of "the furred serpent," I may record the
last, the complete rite of my initiation at _The Spectator_ office.
While I was one day during my novitiate talking over articles and
waiting for instructions--or, rather, finding articles for my chiefs to
write about, for that very soon became the routine--a large,
consequential, not to say stout black Tom-cat slowly entered the room,
walked round me, sniffed at my legs in a suspicious manner, and then, to
my intense amazement and amusement, hurled himself from the floor with
some difficulty and alighted upon my shoulder. Mr. Townsend, who loved
anything dramatic, though he did not love animals as Mr. Hutton did,
pointed to the cat and muttered dramatically, "Hutton, just look at
that!"
He went on to declare that the cat very seldom honoured "upstairs" with
his presence, but kept himself, as a rule, strictly to himself, in the
basement.
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