All the afternoon we lay there, mother visiting us all in turn. Unfortunately, she had not been able to succeed in closing the wardrobe door after her. It yawned in the most suspicious manner, and so Auntie May thought when she came back from Pinner, where she had gone to dine and sleep, as soon as Mr. Blake had departed. About eleven o'clock the next morning she came bouncing in in her hat and jacket, and the moment her eye fell on the open door she cried out: 'Oh, my prophetic soul! Come here at once, Rosamond, or you will be sorry!' She opened the door wider and looked in, but, naturally, could see nothing. 'It _looks_ all right!' she said to Rosamond. 'But all the same I feel sure that Petronilla is somewhere inside. Isn't my _crèpe de chine_ blouse in that corner rucked up rather suspiciously? Gently! Don't let us spoil poor Petronilla's game of "Hide-and-Seek." We mustn't find them too soon.' Fred was under the _crèpe de chine_ blouse, and they found him. Then they found the other boy, with some artificial violets she wears pinned on to the front of her dress in the evening on top of him. On the top story one of the girls was curled into the crown of a hat, and mother was in the lowest shelf with the other, mixed up with an ermine boa. The play lasted quite ten minutes, and Rosamond was delighted. Very little damage was done; in fact, as mother said, a clean, well-licked-every-day cat, if you don't frighten him and drive him to desperation, rarely spoils clothes, or breaks ornaments, or leaves any trace of his presence. But if you chivy him or make him nervous, he doesn't choose to hold himself accountable for any harm he may happen to do, naturally! There were five of us, and, so far, only Fred B. Nicholson had been christened. Rosamond, who is a child who loves putting things into their right places and calling them by their proper names, pointed this out to her Aunt. 'There are certain royalties,' said Auntie May, 'whose religion cannot be chosen till they have grown up and it is decided whom they are to marry. The same with kittens' names. The naming ought to be left to the people with whom they are eventually going to live. I can't keep more than one of them, you know. We should be what they call _cat-ridden_.' This was the first I heard of it. From that day the thought hung over me that our pleasant little party would have to be broken up. I wondered if I could possibly contrive to be the one They kept. I could not bear the idea of moving to a new home. But mother said it was the law of nature. Her motto was from a poem of Miss Jean Ingelow that Auntie May had once quoted-- _To hear, to nurse, to rear, To love and then to lose...._