The Black Attendant

Our recent (Summer 2019)  Garden Book Club selection was: Onward and Upward in the Garden by Katherine S. White. I cannot say that I highly recommend this book to garden readers. The first third was dull as dirt, but it gets better as it goes along. What did strike my interest though was this photo on the very last page:

That missing chapter would likely have made the book a whole lot more readable and relatable, but alas, the lady passed before she had time to write it. The cat, referred to as a "black attendant" is clearly the focus of the photo with the garden and its human mistress as mere backdrop -- as it should be and it leads me to ask: Who then is really the attendant and who the mistress in this setting?