"His head," she said. "Hand under his jaw, and talk to him. He's yours, not mine."So the Duke of Walsingham put a hand up under Hailstone's jaw and talked to him, low, about nothing much, for as long as it took; and the grey stood on three legs like a Christian and let a duchess set two plain shoes on him hot. He said "Thank you" to her afterwards in one piece, and she nodded to the foot.And after that, there was no reason on earth for the Duke of Walsingham to be at the forge at seven every morning—and he was. And after dark, there was no reason for him to be in the Fleece's kitchen on a potboy's stool—and he was, with the cat on his knee.She had chosen the knee on the Thursday. She chose one lap in any room she was in, and would not be moved from it, and the lap she chose was the one that did not get up. He did not get up. He sat two hours a night with a stone of cat on him—fourteen pounds of her—and his tea going cold, and did not shift, and talked.He told the cat about Walsingham, which was a big, cold house in Norfolk with sixty rooms and one man in it. He told her about his mother, who had been shy too, and about the grey's dam. He told her, once, that there was a herring in his pocket again, and that it was the second, and that the first was still in the pantry on a saucer where Miss Tinsley had put it, and that the cat had not touched it, and that he did not know what a man was supposed to do with a herring a cat would not eat."Nothing," said Abigail Tinsley from the range, without turning round. It was the first time she had answered something he was saying to the cat. "She doesn't eat fish off a plate, Your Grace. She never has. She eats a fish head on a Friday off my hand at the forge gate, and that's all the fish she eats, and she's ten years old and set in it."A pause."She doesn't care what use you are. She cares that you sit still."He did not say anything. He sat still.The Kynaston hounds met at Sedgebrook cross on the Monday, at eleven, because of the frost, and the Duke of Walsingham carried the cat through the middle of them.