way, and it was draughty and hard; but, so far, there were
no stones. When they took off the lid of the basket, I found myself
under the shade of a huge moving mountain, that seemed about to fall and
crush me. It was an elephant.

I found that the people where my mother lived had given me to the cook,
who had given me to her cousin, who was engaged to be married to a young
man whose brother-in-law was the elephant's keeper, and so I found
myself in the elephant's house.

There was no milk for me--no heads and tails of fish--no scraps of
meat--no delicious unforeseen morsels of butter.

The elephant was very kind to me. He had once had a friend exactly like
me, he explained, but had unfortunately walked upon him, and now I had
come to fill the vacant place in his large heart.

I resolved at once that he should not walk upon me; but in order to
insure this, I was compelled to enter upon a more active existence than
I had ever known.

When I asked what I was expected to eat, he said--

"Mice, I suppose; or you can have some of my buns if you like. You might
like them at first, but you will soon get tired of them."

But I couldn't eat buns. I was never, from a kitten, fond of such
things. I got very hungry. Again and again the mice rushed through the
straw, and I, heavily, helplessly, in my unpractised way, rushed after
them. At first the elephant laughed heartily at my inexpertness; but
when he saw how hungry and wretched I was, he said--

"They won't give you any milk, and if they find you don't catch the mice
they will take you away from me. Now you are a nice little cat, and I
don't want to part with you. We must try and arrange something."

Then the great thought of my life came to me.

"You walked on the other cat," I said.

"What?" he trumpeted in a voice of thunder.

"I beg your pardon," I said hastily; "I didn't mean to hurt your
feelings"--and, indeed, I could not have imagined that an elephant would
have been so thin-skinned "but a great idea has come to me. Why
shouldn't you walk on mice--not too hard, but just so that I could eat
them afterwards?"

"Well," said the elephant, showing his long tusks in a smile, "you are
not very handsome, and you are not very brisk; but you certainly have
brains, my dear."

He dropped his great foot as he spoke. When he lifted it, there lay a
mouse. I had an excellent supper; and before the week's end I heard the
keeper say, "This cat has certainly done the tric