the dark hint, and Judy's miserable fancy lost itself among ropes and
rivers and rat-poison.

To Alcibiades the bazaar was as much a festival as to any Tabby of them
all. He had been washed, which is terrible at the time, but makes you
self-respecting afterwards, a little puffed-up even. He had been allowed
to come out by the front door, with his mistress in her beautiful dress
that reminded him of rabbits. No one but Alcibiades himself will ever
know what tortures of shame and misery, fighting with joy and affection,
he had endured on those other occasions when he had been smuggled out of
the back door in the early morning to take the damp air with his beloved
lady and she had worn a shabby mackintosh and a red tam-o-shanter.
To-day he wore a blue ribbon; it was uncomfortable, but he knew it spelt
distinction. He rode in a carriage. It was not like the little
governess-cart which had carried him and his mistress through the lanes
about Maidstone; but it was a carriage, and a large horse was his
slave. His mistress herself had tied his blue ribbon; it was she, too,
who adjusted the chain that attached him to a strong staple driven in
just above the schoolroom wainscotting. The chain allowed him to sit at
her feet as she stood by the stall waiting for purchasers, and scanning
the face of each newcomer in an eager anxiety to find there the
countenance of some one who really loved dogs.

But the people were most awful, and she had to own it to herself. There
were Tabbies by the dozen, and young ladies by the score--young ladies
all dressed differently, yet all alike in the fashion of the year before
last; all vacant-faced, smiling agreeably because they knew they ought
to smile--the young of the Tabby kind--Tabby kittens, in fact. No doubt
they were really worthy and interesting, but they did not seem so to
Judy.

There was a sprinkling of men--middle-aged mostly, and bald. There were
a few youths; by some fatality all were fair, and reminded Judy of pork.
A Tabby stopped at her stall, turned over all things and bought a beaded
table-napkin ring. The purchase and the purchaser seemed to Judy to
typify her whole life and surroundings. All her soul reached out to the
Island. She sighed, then she looked up. The crowd had thickened since
she last surveyed it. Four steps led down to the schoolroom from the
outer world: on the top step was a lady, well dressed--oh! marvel!--and
beside her a man--a gentleman. Well, Judy suppose