On the whole it had been a very pleasant time. They had made me quite one of the family, allowing me to share their meals, their pains, their scoldings, and their games. No one could beat me at romps, but in the six-to-seven, when they played card games, I was a little out of it. There was the 'Kings of England' that Auntie May and Beatrice always quarrelled over, and the 'Flower Loto' in which Auntie May, not being a country person, seemed such a muff, and the 'Towns' game where Rosamond was such a dab because of her good memory, and the 'Pictures in the National Gallery' which was the one Kitty liked best. She was pretty quick, but she made such a hash of the pronunciation of the names of the pictures that the others laughed at her, and yet she generally won. She would say, very politely, because she knew she could not pronounce it: 'Will you give me please, Rosamond, the Fighting--oh dear, I can hardly pernounce it--the Fighting Temenare, by Turner?' 'The Fighting Temeraire, I suppose you mean, Kitty,' Rosamond would reply chillingly, not even troubling to say that she hadn't got it. 'Infant Samuel, Amerye? Look sharp!' 'Ain't got him, my dear child. Kitty, Infant Samuel?' 'Not at home, I regret to say. Rosamond, will you, if you please, give me Dignity and _Imperence_, by Landseer, unless it is the one I see you have just let fall into the _wasperbasket_.' 'I can give you Dignity,' said Rosamond, forking it up out of the wastepaper basket, where, sure enough, it was where Kitty said it had fallen. 'And you have got the other, haven't you, already?' 'They _do_ go together,' said Kitty, not seeing that Rosamond wanted to snub her. And that's the way they went on. It was lovely, and I could have stayed there for ever, only at home Auntie May's papa was growing impatient. He wrote to Auntie May continually, to ask why in the name of wonder, if Beatrice was better, Auntie May didn't come home. He said slily he thought the maids were getting into bad ways, and didn't prepare the cats' meals properly, and that Petronilla was pining, and that her two kittens had ceased to obey her, in fact were becoming unmanageable. He asked who this Mr. Fox was, and seemed to think he was the reason Auntie May didn't come home. I could have told him better than that, for whenever Mr. Fox came Auntie May said, 'What a bore! I shall have to shut poor Loki up. You hate the nasty man, Loki, don't you?' 'One tame cat always resents another,' said Mrs. Gilmour. 'Ah, do they? We shall be going home for Christmas,' said Auntie May, 'and then Mr. Fox will be able to breathe freely.' 'He lives in London in the winter, I believe,' said Beatrice. 'Well, London's wide. He won't need to run up against Loki and me any more, unless he likes,' said Auntie May, and she packed up her trunks (I know of nothing more delightful to sit in than a trunk on crackly paper, until you are turned out) and back we went.