, unless your attention wandered. If this happened, a
sharp little pinch quickly diverted your thoughts into the proper
channel. As she pinched you, the Kitten dropped her eyes so that you
noticed how long and black were her eyelashes. Then, having punished
you, she raised her eyes to yours with so seraphic an expression that
you thought of "large-eyed cherubim" and entirely forgot that she had
pinched you at all, unless next day as you looked in the glass you
happened to notice a little blue mark on your cheek. The Kitten could
pinch hard.

She was Ger's greatest joy and his unceasing anxiety. From the very
first he had constituted himself her guide, philosopher . . . and
slave. Yet the dictatorial little lady found out very early in the
day, that in certain things she had to conform to her indulgent
brother's standards, the family standards; and though she might be all
Ffolliot in certain matters, the Grantly ethics were too strong for
her. That Ger should love her, that he should be always kind and
protective and unselfish she took as a matter of course; but she wanted
him to admire her too, and ready as he was to oblige her in most
things, she found that here he was strangely firm. If she told tales
or complained of people, or persisted in tiresome teasing when asked
politely to desist, Ger withdrew the light of his countenance, and the
Kitten was uncomfortable.

To tell tales, or complain, or try to get another into trouble for any
reason whatsoever was forbidden. The others had each in their turn
accepted this doctrine as they accepted day and night, the sun and moon
and stars. The Kitten had to be taught these things, and Ger it was
who saw to it that she learned them.

There was a law in the family that if any member of it, after enduring
for a space a certain line of conduct from another, said, "_Please_
stop it," that person had to stop, or nemesis, by no means
leaden-footed, overtook the offender. It took quite a long time to get
it into the Kitten's head that it was a law.

She had an extraordinarily loud and piercing cry when she was angry--a
cry that penetrated to the sacred study itself, no matter where she
might be in the house.

One day when she was about three years old she was so naughty, so
disobedient, so entirely unmanageable at nursery tea, that Nana, the
long-suffering, fairly lost her temper. The Kitten placed the final
stone on a pillar of wrongdoing by drawing patterns on the