ward and snatched Pussy up.
Such a scream as she gave! and scratched his face with her claws, so
that he was glad to put her down. As soon as I heard her voice I turned
round, and called her in a low tone. She ran quickly to me, and I picked
her up and carried her in my arms the rest of the way. But I saw even my
own papa and mamma laughing a little, for just a minute. That was the
only funeral Pussy ever attended.

Pussy lived several years after the events which are related in these
letters.

It was a long time before her fur grew out again after that terrible
fall into the soft-soap barrel. However, it did grow out at last, and
looked as well as ever. Nobody would have known that any thing had been
the matter with her, except that her eyes were always weak. The edges of
them never got quite well; and poor Pussy used to sit and wash them by
the hour; sometimes mewing and looking up in my face, with each stroke
of her paw on her eyes, as much as to say, "Don't you see how sore my
eyes are? Why don't you do something for me?"

She was never good for any thing as a mouser after that accident, nor
for very much to play with. I recollect hearing my mother say one day to
somebody,--"Pussy was spoiled by her experience in the cradle. She would
like to be rocked the rest of her days, I do believe; and it is too
funny to see her turn up her nose at tough beef. It was a pity she ever
got a taste of tenderloin!"

At last, what with good feeding and very little exercise, she grew so
fat that she was clumsy, and so lazy that she did not want to do any
thing but lie curled up on a soft cushion.

She had outgrown my little chair, which had a green moreen cushion in
it, on which she had slept for many a year, and of which I myself had
very little use,--she was in it so much of the time. But now that this
was too tight for her, she took possession of the most comfortable
places she could find, all over the house. Now it was a sofa, now it was
an arm-chair, now it was the foot of somebody's bed. But wherever it
happened to be, it was sure to be the precise place where she was in the
way, and the poor thing was tipped headlong out of chairs, shoved
hastily off sofas, and driven off beds so continually, that at last she
came to understand that when she saw any person approaching the chair,
sofa, or bed on which she happened to be lying, the part of wisdom for
her was to move away. And it was very droll to see the injured and
reproa