"Leave off! leave off at once!" she screamed. But her voice was drowned by the music. She was making a dash for the boy, when she saw something on the ground crawling towards her feet--a dreadful dark object--a tortoise. At this sight she jumped higher than she had for many long years before, shrieking with all her might, "Sebastian! Sebastian!" "Take them all out, boy and animal! Get them away at once!" she commanded him. Sebastian pulled the boy away, the latter having quickly caught up his tortoise, and when he had got him outside he put something into his hand. "There is the ten cents from Miss Clara, and another ten cents for the music. You did it all quite right!" and with that he shut the front door upon him. Quietness reigned again in the study, and lessons began once more; Miss Rottermeyer now stayed in the study in order to prevent any further dreadful goings-on. [Illustration: MISS ROTTERMEYER JUMPED HIGHER THAN SHE HAD FOR MANY LONG YEARS] But soon another knock came to the door, and Sebastian again stepped in, this time to say that someone had brought a large basket with orders that it was to be given at once to Miss Clara. "For me?" said Clara in astonishment, her curiosity very much excited, "bring it in at once that I may see what it is like." Sebastian carried in a large covered basket and retired. "I think the lessons had better be finished first before the basket is unpacked," said Miss Rottermeyer. Clara could not conceive what was in it, and cast longing glances towards it. In the middle of one of her declensions she suddenly broke off and said to the tutor, "Mayn't I just give one peep inside to see what is in it before I go on?" "On some considerations I am for it, on others against it," he began in answer; "for it, on the ground that if your whole attention is directed to the basket--" but the speech remained unfinished. The cover of the basket was loose, and at this moment one, two, three, and then two more kittens came suddenly tumbling on to the floor and racing about the room in every direction. They jumped over the tutor's boots, climbed up Miss Rottermeyer's dress, rolled about her feet, sprang up on to Clara's couch, scratching, scrambling, and mewing. Clara kept on exclaiming, "Oh, the dear little things! how pretty they are! Look, Heidi, at this one; look, look, at that one over there!" And Heidi in her delight kept running after them first into one corner and then into the other. The tutor stood up by the table not knowing what to do. Miss Rottermeyer was unable at first to speak at all, so overcome was she with horror, and she did not dare rise from her chair for fear that all the dreadful little animals should jump upon her at once. At last she found voice to call loudly, "Tinette! Tinette! Sebastian! Sebastian!" They came in answer to her summons and gathered up the kittens; by degrees they got them all inside the basket again and then carried them off to put with the other two.