She looked at his hands. "Not like that," she said. "You'll have her round the middle like a sack and she'll have your eye. Here."And she put the cat into his arms the way the cat went: one of his big hands under the chest, the other under the hindquarters, the whole of her against the green coatโand in the doing of it, her wrist went under his hand and stayed a moment, and neither of them said anything about it, and the cat, between them, looked at the lane."There," said Abigail. "Now she's yours till the bench."He went down the lane. She went beside him, because the cat had been hers to hand over, or because it was a fine frost morning; she did not say, and he did not ask. He could not think of a single thing to say for forty yards. He carried the cat like a man carrying the Crown, and looked straight in front of him, and Abigail Tinsley said three things on the way about the ice by the trough, and Tuddenham's cart, and the grey, and got the one word to each, and did not seem to mind.At the forge gate, she said, "Mind the cobbles, they're greasy by the trough." And he minded them, and set the cat on the green coat on the bench, and stood back."He holds her right," said Jethro from the stool.Tuddenham the wheelwright was at his door across the lane, and Mrs. Pilbeam the vicar's wife was on the church path with her prayer-book, and by dinner-time Sedgebrook had it.On the Friday, the village was at its windows by seven. It was fish day. The fish-cart came through from Northampton on Fridays, and Abigail Tinsley bought for the Fleece and carried the basket down to the forge afterwards with the heads for the cat, as she had since the cat was small.So she came down the lane at eight with the basket on her arm, and the duke beside her with the cat in his arms, held right; and the village watched them the whole forty yards from behind its curtains, and Sedgebrook's curtains were not thick.The Duke of Walsingham had bought a herring. He had bought it off the cart at seven, before she came down, and had it wrapped in paper, and put it in the pocket of the green coat, meaning to give it to her for the cat. He had walked forty yards beside her with a herring in his pocket and had not found the sentence that began "I boughtโ", and it was still there when he set the cat on the coat.