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devotedly – and it was cherry cake that would finish Andrew off. So Andrew believed. It was true, he seemed to be getting fatter with every month that passed, and he was deeply worried about it. Last winter Andrew had come to a solemn decision – no more sweet things for him. He renounced them, he put them behind him. He got a diet sheet from the doctor which he studied carefully. Above all, cherry cake, that had been his joy and delight, was to be banned forever from the manse.
    Be sure your sins will find you out! So this was what Andrew did night after night, in the garden, when he was supposed to be studying the growth of potatoes and lettuce and strawberries – he was wolfing down, in secret, thick slices of cherry cake!
    Mrs Martin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. If it had been a really serious business – if Andrew was indeed cherry-caking himself to death – there would have been cause for tears. But the truth was, Andrew was and had always been an acute hypochondriac, forever worried about his health. The island doctor had assured Mrs Martin, privately, that there was nothing wrong with Andrew – he could eat, with safety, as much cherry cake as he wanted. And Mrs Martin had told the doctor in return that stoutness ran in the family: Andrew’s father and uncle and grandfather had been even huger than Andrew: vast men, that set the earth trembling under their feet.
    It had taken this cat to discover Andrew’s innocent deceit. A fair fragment of cherry cake Andrew must have dropped and not found in the twilight of last night! The black cat swallowed the cherry, his eyes melting with sheer sensuous delight.
    â€œYou are a strange cat,” said Mrs Martin out loud. The blackbird agreed with her, thrillingly. Fankle himself seemed to acquiesce. He approached the invalid obliquely, across the shallot bed.
    Then, before Mrs Martin was aware of it, he pounced! He pushed the ball of grey wool away, he parried, dancingly he threatened it – you would think he both loved and hated it. Then something happened: his claw got hooked in the endless scarf that Mrs Martin was knitting, and he could not get the paw free. He tugged, he pulled. The knitting needles fell with a tiny clatter on the flagstones. Fankle whirled about, and that was the worst thing he could have done, for the scarf began to drape itself about him, and the harder the cat tugged and struggled, the closer he was wound. The struggle to escape went on for the duration of two blackbird songs, and at the end of it Fankle lay there on the grass at Mrs Martin’s feet like a badly-put-together Egyptian mummy. Even his head was covered – one ear only stuck out. At last, from inside the grey swathe, emerged a tiny ‘miaow.’
    â€œAndrew,” cried Mrs Martin.
    Her stout son was there in five seconds, his pen in his hand.
    â€œFree that cat, Andrew,” said Mrs Martin.
    â€œGood gracious!” said Andrew. “How on earth did this happen?” And then, when he had unwound Fankle and unhooked the claw, “Why, it’s the Thomsons’ cat – Fankle.”
    â€œFankle, is that its name?” said Mrs Martin. “Well, Andrew, since you’ve been so good as to free Fankle, you can have a thick slice of cherry cake.”
    At the gape of guilty astonishment Andrew gave, she began to laugh: first a slow smile, then a reluctant chuckle, then a full-throated shout of merriment. It was just like the happy Mrs Martin of seven years ago, before the melancholy had come on her. It was, to Andrew, the most beautiful sound in all that summer of music and poetry.
    As for Fankle, he gathered himself together with dignity, and left the garden without another glance at Mrs Martin and the Rev Andrew Martin. He even ignored the blackbird.
    It would be wrong to say that Mrs Martin was entirely cured of her depressions from that day on. She still sighed occasionally, and thought with sadness of