For They held up their skirts and played with us, squeaking and miauling to imitate us. They don't imitate us half as well as the parrot imitates Them, and I am told that is pretty much the same thing. The younger kittens took a polite interest in the toy mouse, but we elders preferred conversation with really sensible cats, and if they would only have left us alone, we might have enjoyed ourselves. Auntie May was as bad as the rest, she would keep trying to make me sit on her knee when I didn't want to, and I had to do it so as not to disgrace her by disobedience. There was a woman talking to her about the habits of cats, and trying to get hints from my mistress, whom I gathered was rather a boss, about the care and management of 'kits,' as she would call them. 'I am such a novice,' said she, 'a mere beginner. But I shall hope to be showing in a year or so--' 'I never show,' said Auntie May. 'I think it is most unkind, for the sake of a wretched prize that you have to subscribe to furnish, to subject your pet to all those horrid experiences--fleas, frights, colds, and all the rest of it--' 'Oh, but I see you make quite a friend of _your_ cats. May I ask if you allow your kittens to sleep alone? At what age?' 'As soon as possible,' said Auntie May. 'I never coddle them or allow them to think of being afraid of the dark.' 'But don't they cry out and rend your heart? That one, for instance,' she pointed to Fred, who was crawling up her at the moment. 'This one!' said Auntie May, stooping to pick up Fred. 'Oh, Fred never cries--he breaks. If I put him to sleep alone in my study, he does what he can to show me that it won't do. Many's the time I have come in apprehensively in the morning and found a mush of fragments of china or glass on the floor. He writes his name in ink across blank sheets of paper, he pulls all my correspondence out of my pigeon-holes and lays it in rows for me to see without labour, he separates shoes and earrings and gloves and everything that likes to live in a pair. Oh, he is a regular demon, I _must_ get rid of him some day.' 'Don't sell him to me,' said the lady affectedly, 'after the character you have given him.' By six o'clock carriages were ordered. There was a great chivying, and would any one believe that some of them did not know their own cats? Auntie May knew hers, no fear. Some of us had been sick, but the hostess said it didn't matter, as she had put a drugget down to avert the evils of such a contingency. I am not a bit ashamed of being sick any more than Auntie May is ashamed of blowing her nose. It is a perfectly natural action. We none of us said Goodbye to each other. They never gave us time. Fred and his white cat were really a little sorry to part, but they said nothing, only she gave him a look over her mistress's shoulder which seemed to say, 'I hope we shall meet again.'