"I see," said the father, his face clouding. "I told you, Mr. Flanders, to have no cats on board. Why is this?" "Why," said Bill, "I'm sorry now, of course, but I found the brute being tormented by a gang of toughs, and brought it with me. I never dreamed that there would be any unpleasant consequences." "But I knew," said the owner warmly. "This little girl of mine was marked by her mother, who was frightened into insanity by a mad cat. She has gone crazy several times at the sight of a cat." "But not any more," said the smiling girl. "Come here, kitty, and let me love you." She picked up the kitten, and fondled it. Then the doctor appeared, and looked them all over with a stern, scientific eye. The girl placed the kitten on Bill's chest, close to his chin, and smilingly bade him pat it. But Bill, with a furious, though not profane, exclamation, struck his former pet from him. The girl picked it up, and consoled it, looking down on Bill with mild disapproval. "Please pardon me," he said weakly, "but I hate the thing. I cannot stand it." "Don't worry, young man," said Doctor Calkins. "You'll come around all right, and be as merciful to dumb animals as you have been, while our little girl here is relieved from the obsession of her life. It has never before come into my experience, but I have read about it in my studies--transfusion of blood carries with it transference of psychic qualities. This girl, in taking into her veins some of your blood, has taken your love of cats--I know all about it, because I talked with the mess boy--and you, in giving your blood to her, took something of her obsession. But you will both get over it. Come, Mr. Mayhew, and leave these people alone with the cat." They went out, and the girl sat beside the weak and helpless man, stroking his face and caressing him for an hour before he spoke a vital word. "Say," he said, at last. "Tell me, what is your first name?" "Kitty," she answered. THE TWINS My acquaintance with them began, I may say, about fifteen years before their birth; for I had played marbles with their father, made mud pies with their mother, thrashed the former through his school-days, and loved the latter from the beginning to the end--which is not yet. Finally, I had officiated as best man at the wedding.