'_Key of the lock behind the knot in the mantelpiece
panel in the white parlour._'

'Tavy! I wonder! But ... where did it come from?'

'Out of my White Cat, I s'pose,' said Tavy, his tears stopping. 'Are you
going to see what's in the mantelpiece panel, mother? Are you? Oh, do
let me come and see too!'

'You don't deserve,' mother began, and ended,--'Well, put your
dressing-gown on then.'

They went down the gallery past the pictures and the stuffed birds and
tables with china on them and downstairs on to the white parlour. But
they could not see any knot in the mantelpiece panel, because it was all
painted white. But mother's fingers felt softly all over it, and found a
round raised spot. It was a knot, sure enough. Then she scraped round it
with her scissors, till she loosened the knot, and poked it out with the
scissors point.

'I don't suppose there's any keyhole there really,' she said. But there
was. And what is more, the key fitted. The panel swung open, and inside
was a little cupboard with two shelves. What was on the shelves? There
were old laces and old embroideries, old jewelry and old silver; there
was money, and there were dusty old papers that Tavy thought most
uninteresting. But mother did not think them uninteresting. She laughed,
and cried, or nearly cried, and said:

'Oh, Tavy, this was why the China Cat was to be taken such care of!'
Then she told him how, a hundred and fifty years before, the Head of the
House had gone out to fight for the Pretender, and had told his daughter
to take the greatest care of the China Cat. 'I will send you word of the
reason by a sure hand,' he said, for they parted on the open square,
where any spy might have overheard anything. And he had been killed by
an ambush not ten miles from home,--and his daughter had never known.
But she had kept the Cat.

'And now it has saved us,' said mother. 'We can stay in the dear old
house, and there are two other houses that will belong to us too, I
think. And, oh, Tavy, would you like some pound-cake and ginger-wine,
dear?'

Tavy did like. And had it.

The China Cat was mended, but it was put in the glass-fronted corner
cupboard in the drawing-room, because it had saved the House.

Now I dare say you'll think this is all nonsense, and a made-up story.
Not at all. If it were, how would you account for Tavy's finding, the
very next night, fast asleep on his pillow, his own white Cat--the furry
friend that the China Cat use