The duke got up off the floor at eleven, and did not take his coat, because the cat was on it, and said good night, and went up to bed in his shirtsleeves; and Abigail Tinsley banked her fire, and stood a moment looking at the cat, and the coat, and the stool, and went up too.In the morning, Abigail Tinsley carried the cat back to the forge, because somebody had to, and the duke had already gone down the lane in the coat. He had lifted her off it at seven with two hands, as if she were a loaf, and set her on the chair, and put the coat on warm, and gone; and the cat had sat on the chair where the coat had been and looked at the door for some time.So Abigail picked her up. There is a right way to pick up a cat of that weight and a wrong one, and Abigail had known the right one since she was fourteen, when the cat was small and used to climb up into her arms at the forge gate on a Friday. The fish heads came down the lane to her; she had never gone a step up it after them. One hand under the chest, behind the front legs. The other under the back end, taking the weight. Held in against you, so she can feel she is not going to be dropped. Never by the scruff; she would not have let you.The cat allowed it. She rode down the forty yards of frozen lane with her chin on Abigail's shoulder, looking back at the Fleece.At the forge, the fire was up, and the green coat was on the bench again beside the blue one, and the Duke of Walsingham was standing where he had been put the day before, which was nowhere in particular, near the door.Abigail set the cat on the green coat. The cat turned round once and sat. Abigail said good morning to the shop, and the shop said it back, all but the duchess, who had a foot, and the Duke of Walsingham, who had his hat."She's changed her politics," said Jethro Mabbott from the stool, and that was his for the day.That night, the cat came to the Fleece again at half past nine, round the yard door, and got up on the coat, and was talked to from the floor, and heard from the range; and in the morning it was Thursday.On the Thursday, the Duke of Walsingham carried the cat. He did not say he would. He came down at seven, and Abigail had the cat in her arms at the kitchen door ready to go, and he looked at the cat, and at her, and at the lane, which was white, and it was plain to anyone that he could not let a woman carry that weight forty yards on ice while he walked beside her with nothing in his hands.So he held out his arms.