When summer was over, the gentleman and his wife went away to their other home in a Northern city; but you must not suppose they left their cats to suffer. No, indeed! The kits had a warm house of their own to sleep in, and there was a little door left open at the back of it so that they could go into the kitchen if they wanted to. They were good neat cats, that never abused this privilege. Every day, all winter long, the man came with fresh milk, night and morning, and called “P-ooo-s, p-ooo-s, p-ooo-s.” And two or three times a week they had fresh meat, or, best of all, canned salmon. The gentleman left a whole case of salmon for them every year, and they loved it better than anything else,—for you know cats are very fond of fish. Some cats will even go fishing for themselves if they live near the water. [Illustration: LITTLE MITCHELL LIKES CHINKAPINS “He sat on the Lady’s knee and cracked chinkapins, and would give the shells a toss that sent them far away.” (Page 132)] Baby Mitchell’s lady once had a cat whose name was Little Man Friday, and he would catch his own fish out of a little bayou that came up from the Gulf of Mexico, on whose shore the lady lived. For Little Man Friday was a Florida cat, and perhaps some day you may like to hear his story, and how he got his name. Grandma and the other kits knew perfectly well when the gentleman and his wife were packing their trunks to go North, and it made the poor kits very unhappy. It made Grandma so dreadfully unhappy toward the end of her life that they used to do it slyly, and not let her see the preparations for going away. Well, there isn’t any more about Peterkin, Jack, Hallet, and Goliah. They came into the story only because they lived in Baby Mitchell’s house—no, Baby Mitchell lived in their house a little while, and they didn’t eat him up, although they were such near neighbors. V LITTLE MITCHELL STARTS OUT TO SEE THE WORLD It was soon time for Little Mitchell’s lady to go back to her home in Boston. “What are you going to do with that little squirrel?” asked her friend the gentleman in whose house she stayed. “I shall try to take him with me,” said she. “Of course you will,” said her friend the gentleman’s wife. She knew how it is about kittens, you see, and how you get attached to them and do not like to give them away to other people who may not always remember to take good care of them. So the lady told Little Mitchell he should go to Boston with her. He didn’t say whether he wanted to go or not, but of course he did want to go,—for what could the little fellow have done without his lady? He was still such a baby, and slept more than anything else, and still drank his milk out of a spoon as you drink out of a tumbler. But how he did hate to have his mouth wiped! When he had done drinking milk, his lady would wipe his mouth off on a soft napkin, and he never forgot to scream and cry when she did it. He was like some other naughty children.