ent to lower his voice. "And if we ever get
back to Aunt Jane's and he's there, _I'll_ fix him--"

A general warning hiss went up from the pirate cats who stood nearest
to the children. "Be quiet," muttered Growler, "unless you want your
ears bitten off? Don't you see the Chief is going to sing?"

Mittens had stepped to the front of the platform and was fixing an
angry scowl upon the three children who stood between Growler and
Prowler directly beneath him. When all was so quiet in the hall you
could have heard a pin drop, the Chief cleared his throat and nodded
to the Maltese pirate who stood ready to accompany him upon the
tambourine. In the background a semicircle of other singers clutched
their music and shuffled their feet rather nervously as they waited to
come in at the chorus.

Mittens sang in a high plaintive voice:

"When I was young, you know,
Not very long ago,
I was a mild, a happy Pussy-cat!
My fur was soft as silk,
I lived on bread and milk,
And I dozed away my days upon the mat!"

_Chorus_

("He was then a happy, happy Pussy-cat!")

"I really blush to say
How idly I would play
With my tail or silly spool upon the floor--
Till one unlucky day
Three children came to stay--
After that I wasn't happy any more."

_Chorus_

("No, _indeed_, he wasn't happy any more!")

"They drove me nearly wild,
My temper, once so mild,
They spoiled--the truth of that you'll say is plain--
So I ran away to sea--
'Tis a pirate's life for me,
And I'll never be a Pussy-cat again!"

_Chorus_

("No, _he'll_ never be a Pussy-cat again!")

You may be sure that Rudolf and Ann did not join in the burst of
applause which greeted the end of Captain Mittens' song. Peter would
have been glad to, for he was too young and foolish to understand how
really impertinent Mittens had been, but his brother and sister
quickly stopped that. As for Growler and Prowler, they merely yawned,
as if they had heard this song more than once before, only faintly
clapping their paws together in order not to attract the tyrant's
attention to themselves. The next piece on the program, so Mittens
announced, would be a duet between himself and Miss Tabitha Tortoise,
entitled _Moonbeams on the Back Fence_. This selection proved so very
noisy, so full of quavers, trills, and loud and piercing yowls, that
the children de