o, had lifted a
paw to make a test of the small, awesome stranger, but thought better of
it. How dare he venture when Dot would not?

As the kittens hesitated, a wasp that had been hovering near alighted on
Dot's furry head and rested there for an instant. It would not have
harmed him, had not the beetle become alarmed at a sudden spat from Dab,
and blundered hurriedly away in another direction. This happened to be
directly at Dot, for whose tottering courage the sudden charge was too
much! He sprang to one side, in his turn startling the wasp which
promptly stung him.

With a pained cry the little kitten dashed wildly from the verandah, and
it was several days before he could be persuaded to go on it again--the
beetle had been on the piazza!

As he had not seen or felt the wasp until it stung him, his kitten mind
could only think that somehow the awful black thing had hurt him
cruelly. No more piazzas with painful "black things" for him, thank you!
Its name he heard afterward from his mistress.

Now the kittens are almost full-grown cats, and the ground is covered
with snow. Dot dislikes the snowflakes, but he prefers them to beetles,
and the beetles are gone! But even yet he does not quite forget his baby
terror.

One evening shortly before Christmas Mistress Dorothy went in to where
her pets sat basking in the warmth of the kitchen stove, carrying with
her their usual supply of warm milk. The cats were on their feet at
once, while the girl mischievously held the milk just beyond their
reach. Mewing softly beneath their breath they were surely trying to say
"please!" just as politely as they could.

Still the milk was withheld, and they grew restless; they shifted from
one foot to another working their claws madly in and out; they purred
sonorously and walked rapidly around one another. They rubbed sides so
vigorously as almost to knock each other over but never forgot to keep
an anxious eye toward the coveted supper.

Dorothy at last relented--as they knew she would!--and, stopping to set
the dish down, a sprig of holly dropped from her belt, just as Dot,
turning, gave a particularly ecstatic hump to his back.

Suddenly his tail bushed out like a bolster, his eyes fairly bulged, and
he jumped clean off the floor. In front of him was the holly which a
quick puff of air through the open door had blown scratching unevenly
over the floor directly at poor Dot.

"Sft-sft-ft-sft! Beetle!" spat the terrified pussy