and she allowed it to be used. That day we lunched in the drawing-room, and it is easy to imagine how busy Martha was, for the proceeding was very irregular, and she could not tell how it would turn out. Meal-times were always busy: she had to walk in front of every dish as it was brought in, and precede it as it was taken out, and to-day these duties were complicated by the necessity of going back constantly to the real dining-room to see that the paper-hangers were not idling. To make the rush more overpowering, Jill was in the garden wanting to play (and to play with Jill was one of Martha’s duties) and some young hollyhocks were being put in, certain of which, for inscrutable reasons, had to be dug up again with strong backward kicks of the hind-legs. She had settled that there was but one cat, which was, of course, herself. Occasionally alien heads looked over the wall, and the cries of strangers sounded. Whenever that happened, whatever the stress of housework might be, Martha bounded from house into garden to expel and, if possible, kill the intruder. Once from my bedroom window I saw a terrific affair. Martha had been sitting as good as gold among hair-brushes and nail-scissors, showing me how to shave, when something feline moving in the garden caught her eye. Not waiting for the door to be opened, she made one leap of it out of the window into the apple-tree, and whirled down the trunk, even as lightning strikes and rips its way to the ground, and next moment I saw her, with paw uplifted, tearing tufts of fur from the next-door tabby. She was like one of those amazing Chinese grotesques, half-cat, half-demon, and wholly warrior. Shrill cries rent the peaceful morning air, and Martha, intoxicated with vengeance, allowed the mishandled tabby to escape. Then with awesome face and Bacchanalian eye she ate the tufts of bloodstained fur, rolling them on her tongue and swallowing them with obvious difficulty, as if performing some terrible, antique and cannibalistic rite. And all this from a lady who was so shortly to be confined. But it was no use trying to keep Martha quiet. A second minute inspection of her house was necessary before she decided which should be the birth-chamber. She spent a long time in the wood-shed that morning, and we hoped that it was going to be there; she spent a long time in the bath-room, and we hoped it wasn’t. Eventually she settled on the pantry, and when she had quite made up her mind we made her comfortable. Next morning three dappled little blind things were there. She ate one, for no reason, as far as we could judge, but that she was afraid that Jill wanted to. So, as it was her kitten, not Jill’s, she ate it.