The ladies Ebag said to themselves:  “We are no longer aged nineteen.  We are moreover living with our father.  If he is bedridden, what then?  This gossip connecting our names with that of Mr Ullman is worse than baseless; it is preposterous.  We assert positively that we have no designs of any kind on Mr Ullman.”

Nevertheless, by dint of thinking about that gossip, the naked idea of a marriage with Mr Ullman soon ceased to shock them.  They could gaze at it without going into hysterics.

As for Carl, he often meditated upon his own age, which might have been anything between thirty and forty-five, and upon the mysterious ages of the ladies, and upon their goodness, their charm, their seriousness, their intelligence and their sympathy with himself.

Hence the self-consciousness in the gloaming.

To create a diversion Miss Ebag walked primly to the window and cried: 

“Goldie!  Goldie!”

It was Goldie’s bedtime.  In summer he always strolled into the garden after dinner, and he nearly always sensibly responded to the call when his bed-hour sounded.  No one would have dreamed of retiring until Goldie was safely ensconced in his large basket under the stairs.

“Naughty Goldie!” Miss Ebag said, comprehensively, to the garden.

She went into the garden to search, and Mrs Ebag followed her, and Carl Ullman followed Mrs Ebag.  And they searched without result, until it was black night and the threatening storm at last fell.  The vision of Goldie out in that storm desolated the ladies, and Carl Ullman displayed the nicest feeling.  At length the rain drove them in and they stood in the drawing-room with anxious faces, while two servants, under directions from Carl, searched the house for Goldie.

“If you please’m,” stammered the housemaid, rushing rather unconventionally into the drawing-room, “cook says she thinks Goldie must be on the roof, in the vane.”

“On the roof in the vane?” exclaimed Mrs Ebag, pale.  “In the vane?”

“Yes’m.”

“Whatever do you mean, Sarah?” asked Miss Ebag, even paler.

The ladies Ebag were utterly convinced that Goldie was not like other cats, that he never went on the roof, that he never had any wish to do anything that was not in the strictest sense gentlemanly and correct.  And if by chance he did go on the roof, it was merely to examine the roof itself, or to enjoy the view therefrom out of gentlemanly curiosity.  So that this reference to the roof shocked them.  The night did not favour the theory of view-gazing.

“Cook says she heard the weather-vane creaking ever since she went upstairs after dinner, and now it’s stopped; and she can hear Goldie a-myowling like anything.”

“Is cook in her attic?” asked Mrs Ebag.

“Yes’m.”

“Ask her to come out.  Mr Ullman, will you be so very good as to come upstairs and investigate?”