I blink at her, and stretch out my paw, for I know it is all fun. What is Auntie May's smell, that is all over that dear coat, to Rosamond, compared with what it is to me? The oddest thing of all is that they none of Them seem to imagine how awfully fond I am of Auntie May, and how I hate Mr. Fox for taking my mistress away from me! One of these days at breakfast time there came a letter from Auntie May, and they told me my mother was dead. Kitty tied a bit of black ribbon round my paw. They don't understand. I kept it on till dinner-time to please the child. A month later some one told me that Auntie May had found Zobeide again at a cat-show at the Crystal Palace--or at least a cat that she was sure _was_ Zobeide from some secret signs she knew. She took a prize, anyway. I gather that Auntie May was not able to make good her claim on the cat. Fancy, nearly two years afterwards! Why, I am very much altered since the day I was here first, and whacked Great-Uncle Tomyris in the looking-glass in Beatrice's room. I saw him again the other day. He looks older too, if a ghost _can_ look older. I am not afraid of him any more. I am bored by him, and don't care to raise so much as a paw to him. I am really a very happy cat. I never worry. I eat brown bread. The only bad thing that _could_ happen to me, I think, would be that my new mistress, Rosamond Gilmour, should go and choose a Mr. Fox for herself, and then I should be thrown on the world again. Of course, she _may_ marry, but I believe in that case she would take me with her, and luckily the tribe of Foxes is not common. THE END _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_