A Boston earthquake? The room was full of a great noise and scramble. It seemed ever so long before Bel could comprehend and turn her face toward the centre of it; a second of time has infinitesimal divisions, all of which one feels and measures in such a crisis. Then she and Aunt Blin came together at a sharp angle of incidence in the middle of the room, the kindlings scattered about the carpet; and there was the corollary to the exhortation. The overturned cage,--the dragged-off table-cloth,--the clumsy Bartholomew, big and gray, bewildered, yet tenacious, clinging to the wires and sprawling all over them on one side with his fearful bulk, and the tiny green and golden canary flattened out against the other side within, absolutely plane and prone with the mere smite of terror. "You awful wild beast! I _knew_ you didn't mind!" shrieked Bel, snatching at the little cage from which Bartholomew dropped discomfited, and chirping to Cheepsie with a vehemence meant to be reassuring, but failing of its tender intent through frantic indignation. It is impossible to scold and chirp at once, however much one may want to do it. "You dreadful tiger cat!" she repeated. It almost seemed as if her love for Aunt Blin let loose more desperately her denunciations. There is something in human nature which turns most passionately,--if it does turn,--upon one's very own. "I can't bear you! I never shall! You're a horrid, monstrous, abominable, great, gray--wolf! I knew you were!" Miss Bree fairly gasped. When she got breath, she said slowly, mournfully, "O Bartholomew! I _thought_ I could have trusted you! _Was_ you a murderer in your heart all the time? Go away! I've--no--_con_--fidence _in_ you! No _co-on_--fidence _in_ you, Bartholomew Bree!" It is impossible to write or print the words so as to suggest their grieved abandonment of faith, their depth of loving condemnation. If Bartholomew had been a human being! But he was not; he was only a great gray cat. He retreated, shamefaced enough for the moment, under the table. He knew he was scolded at; he was found out and disappointed; but there was no heart-shame in him; he would do exactly the same again. As to being trusted or not, what did he care about that? "I don't believe you do," said Aunt Blin, thinking it out to this same point, as she watched his face of greed, mortified, but persistent; not a bit changed to any real humility. Why do they say "_dogged_," except for a noble holding fast? It is a cat which is selfishly, stolidly obstinate. "I don't know as I shall really like you any more," said Aunt Blin, with a terrible mildness. "To think you would have ate that little bird!" Aunt Blin's ideal Bartholomew was no more. She might give the creature cheese, but she could not give him "_con_fidence." Bel and the bird illustrated something finer, higher, sweeter to her now. Before, there had only been Bartholomew; he had had to stand for everything; there was a good deal, to be sure, in that.