'Don't talk nonsense, dear,' said mother sadly. 'That only makes it worse. Pick up the pieces.' 'There's only two pieces,' said Tavy. 'Couldn't you stick her together again?' 'Why,' said mother, holding the pieces close to the candle. 'She's been broken before. And mended.' 'I knew that,' said Tavy, still sobbing. 'Oh, my dear White Cat, oh, oh, oh!' The last 'oh' was a howl of anguish. 'Come, crying won't mend her,' said mother. 'Look, there's another piece of her, close to the shovel.' Tavy stooped. 'That's not a piece of cat,' he said, and picked it up. It was a pale parchment label, tied to a key. Mother held it to the candle and read: '_Key of the lock behind the knot in the mantelpiece panel in the white parlour._' 'Tavy! I wonder! But ... where did it come from?' 'Out of my White Cat, I s'pose,' said Tavy, his tears stopping. 'Are you going to see what's in the mantelpiece panel, mother? Are you? Oh, do let me come and see too!' 'You don't deserve,' mother began, and ended,--'Well, put your dressing-gown on then.' They went down the gallery past the pictures and the stuffed birds and tables with china on them and downstairs on to the white parlour. But they could not see any knot in the mantelpiece panel, because it was all painted white. But mother's fingers felt softly all over it, and found a round raised spot. It was a knot, sure enough. Then she scraped round it with her scissors, till she loosened the knot, and poked it out with the scissors point. 'I don't suppose there's any keyhole there really,' she said. But there was. And what is more, the key fitted. The panel swung open, and inside was a little cupboard with two shelves. What was on the shelves? There were old laces and old embroideries, old jewelry and old silver; there was money, and there were dusty old papers that Tavy thought most uninteresting. But mother did not think them uninteresting. She laughed, and cried, or nearly cried, and said: 'Oh, Tavy, this was why the China Cat was to be taken such care of!' Then she told him how, a hundred and fifty years before, the Head of the House had gone out to fight for the Pretender, and had told his daughter to take the greatest care of the China Cat. 'I will send you word of the reason by a sure hand,' he said, for they parted on the open square, where any spy might have overheard anything. And he had been killed by an ambush not ten miles from home,--and his daughter had never known. But she had kept the Cat. 'And now it has saved us,' said mother. 'We can stay in the dear old house, and there are two other houses that will belong to us too, I think. And, oh, Tavy, would you like some pound-cake and ginger-wine, dear?' Tavy did like. And had it. The China Cat was mended, but it was put in the glass-fronted corner cupboard in the drawing-room, because it had saved the House.