“The whole family had gathered to see the show.  My father lingered, hat and riding-whip in hand, though he had a round of twenty miles to make among his patients before night; and Aunt Susan, who was on a visit, stood peering through her spectacles, too much absorbed to notice black Dinah taking a nap in her work-basket and the kitten making sad havoc with her knitting.  Josh was called in from the wood-shed, and, with his hat on the back of his head and hands deep in his pockets, gazed in silence.

“‘Wal,’ he said at length, ‘if that don’t beat all natur’!  Look at the size of that crittur, will you, and the hole he’s jest crawled out of.  Why, he’s as big as a full-grown bat, measures full seven inches across from wing to wing.  Wal, now, I’d gin consider’ble to know what’s be’n goin’ on for a spell back in that leetle house where he’s passed his time; and I’ll bet, Doctor, with all your larnin’, you can’t tell.’”

CHAPTER V.

FURRY-PURRY BECOMING GOLD ELSIE.

Miss Ruth found on her table the next Wednesday afternoon a note very neatly and carefully written, which read as follows:—­

     Miss RUTH,—­Will you Please tell us Another Cat Story, becaus I
     like them best.  So does Fannie Eldridge she said So after You told
     Worm stories.

     Miss Ruth I Have Named my Black Kitty After your Dinah Diamond, her
     Last Name has to Be Spot Becaus her Spot is not a Diamond, this is
     from your Friend.

     NELLIE DIMOCK.

“I hold in my hand,” Miss Ruth said, when she had carefully perused this epistle, “a written request from two members of our Society for another cat story.  Susie and Mollie, have I any more cat stories worth telling?”

“Yes, indeed, Auntie” said Mollie.  “Don’t you remember the pretty fairy story you used to tell us about the good little girl who saved a cat from being drowned by some bad boys, and carried her home? and she turned out to be a fairy cat and gave that girl every thing she wished for—­cakes and candy, and a lovely pink silk frock packed in a nutshell for her to wear to the party?”

“O Mollie! that’s too much of a baby story,” said Susie.  “Tell us about the musical cat who played the piano by walking over the keys, and all the people in the house thought it was a ghost.”

“Yes, Auntie; and the funny story of the cat and the parrot—­how the parrot got stuck up to her knees in a pan of dough, and in her fright said over every thing she had learned to say:  ‘Polly wants a cracker!’ ‘Oh, my goodness’ sakes alive!’ ‘Get out, I say!’ ‘Here’s a row!’ ’Scat, you beast!’ and so on;—­and how the cat got her out.”

“These are old stories, girls, and you have told them for me.”