the way home, and would help
divert their thoughts from their great loss. They grieved so, poor
little lads."

That softened Miss Patricia again, and she said nothing more about our
being pests. But when she passed me she drew her skirts aside as if
she could not bear to so much as brush against me, and from that hour
it has been war to the knife between us.

Matches and I were given a little room up in the attic under the
eaves, but at first we were rarely there during the day. The boys
took us with them wherever they went. We had been there some time
before we were left alone long enough for me to do any exploring.

It was almost dark when that first chance came. I prowled around the
attic awhile. Then I climbed out of the window and swung down by the
vines that covered that side of the house, to the shutters of the room
below. It happened to be Miss Patricia's room. As I perched on the top
of the shutters, leaning over and craning my neck, I could see Miss
Patricia sitting there in the dusk beside her open window. Her hands
were folded in her lap, and she was rocking gently back and forth in a
high-backed rocking-chair, with her eyes closed.

I thought it would be a good chance for me to take a peep into her
room, so I ventured to swing over and drop down on the window-sill
beside her, on all fours. I did it very quietly, so quietly, in fact,
that I do not see how she could possibly have been disturbed; yet I
give you my word, Ring-tail, that woman shrieked until you could have
heard her half a mile. I never was so terrified in all my life. It
paralysed me for an instant, and then I sprang up by the vines to the
lightning-rod, and streaked up it faster than any lightning ever came
down. Once in my room, I shook all the rest of the evening.

[Illustration]

Matches said that Miss Patricia was probably worse scared than I was,
but that's impossible. I never made a sound, and as for her--why, even
the cook came running when Miss Patricia began to shriek, and she was
in the coal-cellar at the time, and is deaf in one ear.

But Matches always disagreed with me in everything, and I was not
sorry when we parted company. I'd better tell you about that next. It
happened in this way. Stuart came into the room one day with Sim
Williams, one of the boys who was always swarming up the stairs to see
us. Sim was older than Stuart, and one of those restless, inquiring
boys, never satisfied with letting well enough alone. He