game will last me till that poor cat gets well again." Then he went
upstairs, and brought down a bottle of something very soft and slippery,
like lard, and put it on my eyes, and it made them feel much better.
After that he gave me some milk into which he had put some of his very
best brandy: that was pretty hard to get down, but I understood enough
of what they had said, to be sure that if I did not take something of
the kind I should never get well. After breakfast I tried to walk, but
my right paw was entirely useless. At first they thought it was broken,
but finally decided that it was only sprained, and must be bandaged. The
bandages were wet with something which smelled so badly it made me feel
very sick, for the first day or two. Cats' noses are much more sensitive
to smells than people's are; but I grew used to it, and it did my poor
lame paw so much good that I would have borne it if it had smelled twice
as badly. For three days I had to lie all the time in the cradle: if
your grandfather caught me out of it, he would swear at me, and put me
back again. Every morning he put the soft white stuff on my eyes, and
changed the bandages on my leg. And, oh, my dear Helen, such good things
as I had to eat! I had almost the same things for my dinner that the
rest of them did: it must be a splendid thing to be a man or a woman! I
do not think I shall ever again be contented to eat in the shed, and
have only the old pieces which nobody wants.

Two things troubled me very much while I was confined to the cradle: one
was that everybody who came in to see your mother laughed as if they
never could stop, at the first sight of me; and the other was that I
heard poor Caesar mewing all around the house, and calling me with all
his might; and I knew he thought I was dead. I tried hard to make your
kind mother notice his crying, for I knew she would be willing to let
him come in and see me, but I could not make her understand. I suppose
she thought it was only some common strolling cat who was hungry. I have
always noticed that people do not observe any difference between one
cat's voice and another's; now they really are just as different as
human voices. Caesar has one of the finest, deepest-toned voices I
ever heard. One day, after I got well enough to be in the kitchen, he
slipped in, between the legs of the butcher's boy who was bringing in
some meat; but before I had time to say one word to him, Mary flew at
him with the broo