ridiculous creature
imaginable. She had proceeded half-way on this pilgrimage towards me
when suddenly, with the rapidity of lightning, as her ear caught the
sound of the hiss and her eyes fell upon the Blue Dryad, her whole
civilized "play-acting" demeanour vanished, and her body stiffened and
contracted to the form of a watchful wild beast with the ferocious and
instinctive antipathy to a natural enemy blazing from its eyes. No
change of a shaken kaleidoscope could have been more complete or more
striking. In one light bound she was on the floor in a compressed,
defensive attitude, with all four feet close together, near, but not too
near, the unknown but clearly hostile intruder; and to my surprise, the
snake turned and made off towards the window. Stoffles trotted lightly
after, obviously interested in its method of locomotion. Then she made a
long arm and playfully dropped a paw upon its tail. The snake wriggled
free in a moment, and coiling its whole length, some three and a half
feet, fronted this new and curious antagonist.

At the very first moment, I need hardly say, I expected that one short
stroke of that little pointed head against the cat's delicate body would
quickly have settled everything. But one is apt to forget that a snake
(I suppose because in romances snakes always "dart") can move but slowly
and awkwardly over a smooth surface, such as a tiled or wooden floor.
The long body, in spite of its wonderful construction, and of the
attitudes in which it is frequently drawn, is no less subject to the
laws of gravitation than that of a hedgehog. A snake that "darts" when
it has nothing secure to hold on by, only overbalances itself. With half
or two-thirds of the body firmly coiled against some rough object or
surface, the head--of a poisonous snake at least--is indeed a deadly
weapon of precision. This particular reptile, perhaps by some instinct,
had now wriggled itself on to a large and thick fur rug about twelve
feet square, upon which arena took place the extraordinary contest that
followed.

The audacity of the cat astonished me from the first. I have no reason
to believe she had ever seen a snake before, yet by a sort of instinct
she seemed to know exactly what she was doing. As the Dryad raised its
head, with glittering eyes and forked tongue, Stoffles crouched with
both front paws in the air, sparring as I had seen her do sometimes with
a large moth. The first round passed so swiftly that morta