shiver, and moan: 'Oh, mother, we were so nice and
warm, and now we are so cold! Why is it? What have we done? Were we
naughty?'

"'Drat the cats!' said Nurse, when she came up from supper, and found
Mrs. Tabby White trying to warm her kittens against her own comfortable
fur; 'if they haven't tumbled in the bath!'

"Nurse dried the poor, dear, cruelly-used kittens a little (her hands
were bigger than Mrs. Tabby's, so she could do it better), and put them
in a basket with flannel, and next day Tabby-Kit was quite well, though
rather ragged looking; but Brindle had taken a chill, and for days he
hung between life and death. Poor Mrs. Tabby was like a wild cat with
anxiety, and when at last Brindle was well again (or nearly, for he
always had a slight cough after that), Mrs. Tabby White said to her
children, 'My darlings, I was wrong, I was a silly old cat.'

"'No,' purred the cat-children, 'darling mother, you were always the
best of cats.'

"Mrs. Tabby kissed them both, for of course any one would be pleased
that her children should think her the best of cats, but in her heart
she knew well enough how silly she had been.

"Then she set about washing the kittens, not with pink soap and white
towel this time, but with white paws and pink tongue in the good
old-fashioned way."

* * * * *

"Thank you, mother," said all the kittens; "what a nice horrible story."

"What is the moral?" asked the youngest kitten but three.

"The moral," said Mrs. Buffy, "is, 'There is such a thing as being too
clever by half.' I'm not sure about the story being true, but I know the
moral is. Why, it's nearly tea-time. Come along, children, and get your
tea."

So they all crept quietly away to catch the necessary mice, and the
youngest was so afraid of being too clever by half, that she would never
have caught a mouse at all, if her mother had not boxed her
ears--softly, as mother cats do; you know how I mean!

The White Persian

I WAS a handsome, discreet, middle-aged, respectable, responsible,
domesticated tabby cat. I was humble. I knew my place, and kept it. My
place was the place nearest the fire in winter, or close to the sunny
window in summer. There was nothing to trouble me--not so much as a fly
in the cream, or an error in the leaving of the cat's meat, until some
thoughtless person gave my master the white Persian cat.

She was very beautiful in her soft, foolish, namby-pamby, blu