Abigail Tinsley, at the range, put the spoon down without a sound. She had run that kitchen since she was twenty, and had heard men say a great many things in it, most of them to her, and none of them like that, and none of them to a cat. She did not turn round. She stood with her hands flat on the rail of the range and let him go on, and he went on about the grey, and how the grey had let the farrier have his foot; and about the big chestnut that leaned; and about the frost. His voice on the floor behind her was low, and easy, and it did not stop. It was the voice he had used to Bugler in the doorway.Her father came through from the tap-room at ten for the cheese, and stopped in the door. Zadok Tinsley was fifty-eight, a widower, a big, slow man with a bald head and a book in the tap-room he swore he did not keep. He looked at the Duke of Walsingham sitting on his kitchen floor. He looked at the cat on the coat. He looked at his daughter's back."That's the forge's cat," he said."It is.""Never been past the trough in her life. Jethro Mabbott says so.""Well, she's past it now, Father.""What's she doing here?"Abigail turned round then, and took the cheese down off the dresser, and put it in his hands, and looked at him and not at the man on the floor, and said what she had decided to say."She's the forge's cat. She only comes for the fish."It was Tuesday. There had not been a fish in the Fleece since Friday. Her father knew that as well as she did, and looked at her, and took the cheese, and went.