"C'est le Prince Charmant qui lui dit; 'Medor donne la patte!'" Or our old tomcat would rise from his slumbers with his tail up, and rub an imaginary skirt; and it was-- "Regarde Mistigris! La fee Tarapatapoum est en train de lui frotter les oreilles!'" We mostly spoke French, in spite of strict injunctions to the contrary from our fathers and mothers, who were much concerned lest we should forget our English altogether. In time we made a kind of ingenious compromise; for Mimsey, who was full of resource, invented a new language, or rather two, which we called Frankingle and Inglefrank, respectively. They consisted in anglicizing French nouns and verbs and then conjugating and pronouncing them Englishly, or _vice versa_. For instance, it was very cold, and the school-room window was open, so she would say in Frankingle-- "Dispeach yourself to ferm the feneeter, Gogo. It geals to pier-fend! we shall be inrhumed!" or else, if I failed to immediately understand--"Gogo, il frise a splitter les stonnes--maque aste et chute le vindeau; mais chute--le donc vite! Je snize deja!" which was Inglefrank. With this contrivance we managed to puzzle and mystify the uninitiated, English and French alike. The intelligent reader, who sees it all in print, will not be so easily taken in. When Mimsey was well enough, she would come with my cousins and me into the park, where we always had a good time--lying in ambush for red Indians, rescuing Madge Plunket from a caitiff knight, or else hunting snakes and field-mice and lizards, and digging for lizard's eggs, which we would hatch at home--that happy refuge for all manner of beasts, as well as little boys and girls. For there were squirrels, hedgehogs, and guinea-pigs; an owl, a raven, a monkey, and white mice; little birds that had strayed from the maternal nest before they could fly (they always died!), the dog Medor, and any other dog who chose; not to mention a gigantic rocking-horse made out of a real stuffed pony--the smallest pony that had ever been! Often our united high spirits were too boisterous for Mimsey. Dreadful headaches would come on, and she would sit in a corner, nursing a hedgehog with one arm and holding her thumb in her mouth with the other. Only when we were alone together was she happy, and then, _moult tristement!_ On summer evenings whole parties of us, grown-up and small, would walk through the park and the Bois de Boulogne to the "Mare d'Auteuil"; as we got near enough for Medor to scent the water, he would bark and grin and gyrate, and go mad with excitement, for he had the gift of diving after stones, and liked to show it off.