But Juno would not be reconciled.  She drooped around and mewed so pitifully for several days that we could not endure it; so we went to a neighbor’s cat that had more kittens than she needed, and borrowed one of them for Juno.  Dear me, how proud she was of it, and how she took it in her arms and cuddled it up close to her!  The whole family came out to look at her, and the Colonel said: 

“And this is only a cat!  What great tenderness there should be in the human heart when a poor little animal can be like this!”

And the next day Uncle Dick, who was a great favorite with all of us, rode up to the fence and shouted cheerily: 

“Hello, boys!  Here is a present for you.  I killed a mother fox at the mouth of her hole, and here is one of her babies.”

And he reached down into his pocket and drew out a baby fox about as large as an interrogation point, but the funniest and sharpest little thing you ever saw, though its eyes were not open yet.

With one accord we shouted: 

“There’s a baby for Juno!” and away we ran with it and laid it beside the new kitten.

Juno arose and looked the little stranger over with evident anxiety.  She seemed to be troubled with some haunting suspicion that this was not an orthodox cat.  The bushy red tail was a special subject of curiosity.  She touched it up with her paw and looked at it with her head on one side.

For several dreadful minutes we were afraid that Juno was going to leave an orphan on our hands; but we did not know her, after all.  In a few moments she reached the conclusion that the fox was probably a cat of some new and interesting kind, and she lay down again, purring softly, and took the little stranger to her heart.

Such a pair as those two did make!  We named the fox Flash, and he was the pride and the delight of the family.  In a few days after his adoption Juno came to look on him as quite the most beautiful creature she had ever seen, and she showed a decided partiality for him.  When she moved her family from the stable to mother’s room, which she did systematically every morning, she always carried Flash in first and laid him on the rug with an air of pride impossible to describe.

“No, no, Juno,” mother would say, “he is very pretty, but I can’t have him here.”

But Juno would run back after the kitten, and, having toiled upstairs with it, would lay it on the rug also and lie down beside it, as though she would say: 

“I’d like to see you move me now!”

Within a month Flash could run everywhere, and he was the brightest, the sharpest, the merriest little fellow that ever kept a respectable cat in trouble with his escapades.  That sharp nose of his was everywhere at once, it seemed to me, and those bright eyes were peering into every corner in search of mischief.  He trotted about the house with a swaggering impudence, and went to bed in one of the Colonel’s shoes if he liked, or played hide and seek in father’s hat when he found it convenient.