"Ah!" said Mrs Trevor, in a tone of relief, "the kitten, to be sure.-- Take Maisie to find the kitten, my darling, and have a quiet little game together in the schoolroom. I daresay Dennis will like to stay here, and play with the others until tea-time." For a wonder, Philippa was quite ready to do what was proposed, and the two little girls went away together. "Did you like it?" asked Maisie anxiously. "It's pretty, isn't it? And it keeps itself very white. It's the prettiest of all the kittens--next to ours." "I like it very much," said Philippa graciously, "but it scratches. Miss Mervyn says it's a savage kitten." "They all scratch, you know," said Maisie seriously, as they entered the schoolroom; "when they're quite little, they don't know better. You'll have to teach it to be good." "How?" asked Philippa, looking round the room for the kitten, which was nowhere to be seen. "Entirely by kindness," said Maisie, using an expression she had seen in one of her books. "It's hidden itself again," said Philippa discontentedly; "it's always hiding itself." This time the kitten had found a good hiding-place, and the little girls searched everywhere in vain for a long while. At last Maisie thought of lifting the silk cover on the top of Miss Mervyn's work-basket, and there, snugly coiled in the midst of wools, knitting, and fancy work, lay the white kitten fast asleep! This was not the worst, for it had evidently amused itself first by a game of play. All the skeins of wool were twisted up in a tangle, and a quantity of silk was wound tightly round its claws. "There!" said Philippa, "that's the third wrong thing it's done to-day! It's torn mother's lace, and scratched my arm, and tangled up all Miss Mervyn's wool. Now she'll want it to go away more than ever." Maisie looked at the white kitten with dismay. It did not seem to have made a good beginning in its new home. "Will Miss Mervyn be _very_ angry?" she said. "Can't we try to put the wool straight?" "Oh, _that_ doesn't matter," said Philippa coolly; "but it _is_ a naughty kitten, isn't it?" Maisie lifted the kitten carefully out of its warm bed, and gently disentangled its claws from the silk. "Well," she said, "I don't really believe it _meant_ to be naughty. Kittens always like to play, and then, you see, it always slept in a basket, so perhaps it thought this was its own. You must give it a ball or a cork, and then it won't want to play with the wrong things." Philippa generally looked down upon Maisie and thought her babyish, but she had such motherly ways with the kitten, and gave advice with so much gravity, that she now listened with respect to what she said.