The whole seven had a narrow escape with their lives just after Sybil left us. They over-ate themselves on snails, and Mrs. Hedgehog had to stay at home and nurse them. I kept my eye on our neighbours and brought her the news. "Christian has come home," I said, one day. "The Queen has given him a pardon." "Then he _did_ take the pheasants' eggs?" said Mrs. Hedgehog. "Certainly not," said I. "In the first place it wasn't eggs, and in the second place it was Black Basil who took whatever it was, and he has confessed to it." "Then if Christian didn't do it, how is it that he has been forgiven?" said Mrs. Hedgehog. "I can't tell you," said I; "but so it is. And he is at this moment with the clergywoman and the tinker-mother." "Where is Sybil?" asked Mrs. Hedgehog. I did not know then, and I am not very clear about her now. I never saw her again, but either I heard that she had married Black Basil, and that they had gone across the water to some country where the woods are bigger than they are here, or I have dreamt it in one of my winter naps. I am inclined to think it must be true, because I always regarded Sybil as somewhat proud and unsociable, and I think she would like a big wood and very few neighbours. But really when one sleeps for several months at a stretch it is not very easy to be accurate about one's dreams. FOOTNOTES: Footnote B: _Patteran_ = the gipsy "trail." Footnote C: "Poknees," gipsy word for magistrate. TOOTS AND BOOTS. * * * * * CHAPTER I. My name is Toots. Why, I have not the slightest idea. But I suppose very few people--cats or otherwise--are consulted about their own names. If they were, these would perhaps be, as a rule, more appropriate. What qualities of mind or body my name was supposed to illustrate, I have not to this hour a notion. I distinctly remember the stage of my kittenhood, when I thought that Toots was the English for cream. "Toots! Toots!" my young mistress used to say, in the most suggestive tones, creeping after me as I would creep after a mouse, with a saucerful of that delicious liquid in her hand. "Toots is first-rate stuff," I used to think, and I purred accordingly, for I never was an ungrateful cat.