Mistigris used to lie in wait for me in the shadow of the bed-curtain sitting on her warm nest in the eiderdown. Talk of French politeness; she never once invited me to come up! And if I happened to get down to see her about meal times when she sat on the table between Monsieur and Madame Ducrot, as they drank their soup and ate their salad, she frowned at me through the glass door and pretended not to know me. I didn't want any cabbage soup, either, their cookery is far too greasy for me. But when she was not so pleasantly engaged and the door of the room was open, she used to come to me and thread herself in and out through the balusters as a sign of friendliness. I never saw her after seven o'clock. They turn all lights out on the stairs here after eight, and I used to sit indoors on the cold wood floor in the evenings and listen for Auntie May to come in. Manxie fed her so badly that in disgust she used to go out and get her dinner at a restaurant. She used to come up, bumping herself in the dark, and fumble for the door-key under the mat, where Manxie, who went to bed at nine to save lights, had left it. There was a jam-pot on a bracket in the hall full of oil and a wick floating in it. It was the cheapest possible way of lighting, so Manxie said. Then Auntie May used to grope for her sealed bottle of milk on the table, and light one of those beastly French matches that smell and sputter, and read her letters if there were any, and then go to bed. [Illustration: MISTIGRIS USED TO LIE IN WAIT FOR ME.] I used to help her to undress, playing with her strings and stay-laces, and anything in the least taggy, and placing her slippers in different ends of the room ready for her to find in the morning. Then when she was in bed, I used to take a header off the high bureau and light on her. She kissed my head for about five minutes and I purred, and then having said good-night to her properly so, I lay down on the lower part of the bed, for I was getting such a big cat that my weight was too much for her shoulder where I used to like to lie. She put out her hand and stroked me sometimes in the middle of the night; she liked to feel I was there. If she was too sleepy to wake up, I generally crept up and just touched the tip of her nose and so back again without waking her. I didn't attempt to prise her eyelids open, as Fred did once when he had the privilege of sleeping with her. He never had it again. Auntie May values her eyes above anything, and she said it was too dangerous. I never woke her in the morning, for I thought she wanted all the sleep she could get. Manxie used to come and look at her sometimes when she was asleep, and pry into her drawers. I always kept one eye on her, and she knew it. The funny thing is it frightened her, though, of course, she knew that I could not tell tales of her. At last poor Auntie May stayed in bed altogether, and the doctor brought his friend Mrs. Jay.