ifferent
lands. You really never knew whether it was cleared up or not, and the
very lawlessness was attractive.

Sometimes they sat in the big rocker, that would hold both, and they
would divide the cat between them and sing to her. Occasionally kitty
would tire of such unceasing attention, and emit a long, appealing
m-i-e-u. If Mr. Theodore was there--and he never seemed to mind the
little girls playing about--he would say, "Children, what are you doing
to that cat?" and they would no longer try to divide her, but let her
curl up in her own fashion.

"Oh, mother!" said the little girl, one rainy afternoon when she had to
stay in, "couldn't we have a Sunday cat that didn't have to stay out in
the stable and catch mice for a living? Nora's is so nice and cunning
and you can talk to it just as if it was folks. And you can't quite make
dolls, folks. You have to keep making b'lieve all the time."

"Martha doesn't like cats. And Jim would torment it and plague you
continually. And you know I wouldn't let Jim's little dog come in the
house."

"But so many people do have cats."

"There's hardly room with so many folks. You wait until Christmas and
see what Santa Claus brings you," said her mother cheerily.

There came a little snow and the boys brought out their sleds. For two
days the air was alive with shouts and snowballing, and then it was like
a drift of gray sand alongside of the street gutter. But winter had
fairly set in. Stoves were up.

In the back room at the Underhills' they had a fire of logs on the
hearth, and it was delightful.

Ben was tormented more and more. The boys knocked off his cap in the
gutter and made up rhymes about him which they sang to any sort of tune.
This was one:

"Benjamin Franklin Underhill,
Was a little boy too awfully still:
Forty bears came out of the wood,
And ate up the boy so awfully good."

"Come out from under that hill," while some boy would reply, "Oh, he
dassent! He's afraid his shadder'll meet him in the way."

One day he came home with his pocket all torn out. Perkins had slipped a
crooked stick in it and given it what the boys called a "yank."

"Go in and ask your mother for a needle and thread. You'll make a good
tailor!" he jeered.

"What is all this row about?" asked his mother, who was in the front
basement.

Ben held out his jacket ruefully, and said, "Perkins never would leave
him alone."

Jim had complained and said Ben always showe