One afternoon we had the most beautiful play we had ever had. We ran after the ball, we swung together, Betty knelt down on the grass and shook her curly hair so that I could catch at it with my paws, we had a tea-party on the box, and when it was over we went to the rose-bush and found a bud beginning to be a rose. It was a splendid afternoon! After we had found the bud beginning to be a rose we sat down together under the rose-bush. Betty sat on the thick green grass, and I lay comfortably on her soft lap and purred. “We have jumped so much that I am a little tired, and I feel hot,” she said; “are you tired, kitty? Isn’t it nice under the rose-bush, and won’t it be a beautiful place for a tea-party when all the white roses are out? Perhaps there will be some out to-morrow. We’ll come in the morning and see!” Perhaps she was more tired than she knew. I don’t think she meant to go to sleep, but presently her head began to droop and her eyes to close, and in a little while she sank down softly and was quite gone. I left her lap and crept up close to the breast of her little white frock, and curled up in her arm and lay and purred, and looked at her while she slept. I did so like to look at her. She was so pretty and pink and plump, and she had such a lot of soft curls. They were crushed under her warm cheek and scattered on the grass. I played with them a little while she lay there, but I did it very quietly, so that I should not disturb her. She was lying under the white rose-bush still asleep, and I was curled up against her breast, watching her, when her mamma came out with her papa, and they found us. “Oh, how pretty!” the mamma said. “What a lovely little picture! Betty and her kitten asleep under the white rose-bush, and just one rose watching over them. I wonder if Betty saw it before she dropped off. She has been looking at the buds every day to see if they were beginning to be roses.” “She looks like a rose herself,” said her papa, “but it is a pink rose. How rosy she is!” He picked her up in his arms and carried her into the house. She did not waken, and as I was not allowed to sleep with her I could not follow, so I stayed behind under the rose-bush myself a little longer before I went to bed. When I looked at the buds I saw that there were several with streaks of white showing through the green, and there were three that I was sure would be roses in the morning, and I knew how happy Betty would be and how she would laugh and dance when she saw them. I often hear people saying to each other that they should like to understand the strange way I have of suddenly saying “Meeiaou! Mee-iaou!” as if I was crying. It seems strange to me that they don’t know what it means. I always find myself saying it when I remember that lovely afternoon when we played so happily, and Betty fell asleep under the rose-bush, and I thought how pleased she would be when she came out in the morning.