dently to herself, as if her woes must
find a vent. She would _not_ be easy and comfortable. No cushion could
allure, no soft beguilements win her to purr, no dainty fare fill out
her rusty coat, no warmth or kindness banish the scared look from her
sad green eyes, no ball or spool lure her to play, or cause her to wag
her mortified thin tail with joy.

Poor, dear little Blot! She was a pathetic spectacle, and her end was
quite in keeping with the rest of her hard fate. Trying one day to make
her come and be cuddled, she retreated to the hearth, and when I pursued
her, meaning to catch and pet her, she took a distracted skip right into
a bed of hot coals. One wild howl, and another still more distracted
skip brought her out again, to writhe in agony with four burnt paws and
a singed skin.

"We must put the little sufferer out of her pain," said a strong-minded
friend; and quenched little Blot's life and suffering together in a pail
of water.

I laid her out sweetly in a nice box, with a doll's blanket folded round
her, and, bidding the poor dear a long farewell, confided her to old
MacCarty for burial. He was my sexton, and I could trust him to inter my
darlings decently, and not toss them disrespectfully into a dirt-cart or
over a bridge.

My dear Mother Bunch was an entire contrast to Blot. Such a fat, cosey
old mamma you never saw, and her first appearance was so funny, I never
think of her without laughing.

In our back kitchen was an old sideboard, with two little doors in the
lower part. Some bits of carpet were kept there, but we never expected
to let that small mansion till, opening the door one day, I found Mrs.
Bunch and her young family comfortably settled.

I had never seen this mild black cat before, and I fancy no one had ever
seen her three roly-poly, jet-black kits. Such a confiding puss I never
met, for when I started back, surprised, Mrs. Bunch merely looked at me
with an insinuating purr, and began to pick at my carpet, as if to
say,--

"The house suited me; I'll take it, and pay rent by allowing you to
admire and pet my lovely babies."

I never thought of turning her out, and there she remained for some
months, with her children growing up around her, all as fat and funny,
black and amiable, as herself.

Three jollier kits were never born, and a more devoted mother never
lived. I put her name on the door of her house, and they lived on most
comfortably together, even after they grew too b