harmonizing pleasantly with the happy purring of an enormous cat, who sat winking at the blaze; and while evidently inconvenienced by the heat, lacking energy to retreat from it. Catty had just obtained the newspaper,--as the master had gone to dinner,--and was really about to enjoy a comfortable evening. Far from devoid of social qualities, or a liking for companionship, she still lived almost entirely to herself, the other servants being chiefly English, whose habits and ways were all strange to her, and all whose associations were widely different from her own. Catty Broon had thus obtained a reputation for unsociability which she by no means deserved, but to which, it must be owned, she was totally indifferent. In fact, if _they_ deemed _her_ morose and disagreeable, _she_, in turn, held _them_ still more cheaply, calling them a set of lazy devils that “were only in each other's way,” and “half of them not worth their salt.” Catty had also survived her generation; all her friends of former years had either died or emigrated, and except two or three of the farm-servants, none of the “ould stock,” as she called them, were in existence. This brief explanation will show that Catty's comparative isolation was not entirely a matter of choice. If a sense of loneliness did now and then cross her mind, she never suffered it to dwell there, but chased away the unpleasant thought by some active duty; or if the season of that were over, by the amusing columns of the “Intelligence,”--a journal which realized to Mrs. Broon's conceptions the very highest order of literary merit. Catty did not take much interest in politics; she had a vague, dreamy kind of notion that the game of party was a kind of disreputable gambling, and Parliament itself little better than a “Hell,” frequented by very indifferent company. Indeed, she often said it would be “well for us if there was no politics, and maybe then, there would be no taxes either.” The news she liked was the price of farming-stock at fairs and markets,--what Mr. Hynes got for his “top lot” of hoggets, and what Tom Healey paid for the “finest heifers ever seen on the fair-green.” These, and the accidents--a deeply interesting column--were her peculiar tastes; and her memory was stored with every casualty, by sea, fire, and violence, that had graced the “Intelligence” for forty years back; in truth they formed the stations of her chronology, and she would refer to events as having occurred the same year that Joe Ryan was hanged, or “the very Christmas that Hogan fired at Captain Crossley.” An inundation of great extent also figured in these memorabilia, and was constantly referred to, by her saying, “This or that happened the year after the Flood,” suggesting a rather startling impression as to her longevity.