e cat.

'Oh, no, I won't; I will play in here. Don't be so ill-natured.' And
with a very bad grace the cat untied the string and threw the golden
ball into the lion's lap, and composed himself to sleep again.

For a long while the lion tossed it up and down gaily, feeling that,
however sound asleep the boy-brother might LOOK, he was sure to have one
eye open; but gradually he began to edge closer to the opening, and at
last gave such a toss that the ball went up high into the air, and he
could not see what became of it.

'Oh, how stupid of me!' he cried, as the cat sprang up angrily, 'let us
go at once and search for it. It can't really have fallen very far.'
But though they searched that day and the next, and the next after that,
they never found it, because it never came down.

After the loss of his ball the cat refused to live with the lion any
longer, but wandered away to the north, always hoping he might meet
with his ball again. But months passed, and years passed, and though he
travelled over hundreds of miles, he never saw any traces of it.

At length, when he was getting quite old, he came to a place unlike any
that he had ever seen before, where a big river rolled right to the foot
of some high mountains. The ground all about the river bank was damp
and marshy, and as no cat likes to wet its feet, this one climbed a
tree that rose high above the water, and thought sadly of his lost ball,
which would have helped him out of this horrible place. Suddenly he saw
a beautiful ball, for all the world like his own, dangling from a branch
of the tree he was on. He longed to get at it; but was the branch strong
enough to bear his weight? It was no use, after all he had done, getting
drowned in the water. However, it could do no harm, if he was to go a
little way; he could always manage to get back somehow.

So he stretched himself at full length upon the branch, and wriggled his
body cautiously along. To his delight it seemed thick and stout. Another
movement, and, by stretching out his paw, he would be able to draw the
string towards him, when the branch gave a loud crack, and the cat made
haste to wriggle himself back the way he had come.

But when cats make up their minds to do anything they generally DO it;
and this cat began to look about to see if there was really no way of
getting at his ball. Yes! there was, and it was much surer than the
other, though rather more difficult. Above the bough where the ball