back home, and I shall stay in this place only long enough to attend your ladyship’s famous party.

“Said Lady Yellow-paw to my great, great, great, great, great, twenty-seven times great grandmother Pinky-white, when she had ended her story, said Lady Yellow-paw: ‘Pinky-white, you do not speak of having a dog in your Happy Family.’

“She had hardly said this before a tittering, chuckling, clicking noise was heard and out spoke a pert little spotted black-and-white kitten and said, ‘Te! he! he! I used to play with a dog’s tail! A black, peeked-nosed dog’s tail, and his name was Trippy; and he was good to me. He had a curly tail.’

“‘Silence!’ cried the spotted black-and-white kitten’s mother. ‘Don’t you know better than to speak up at a famous party—a little thing like you? Silence!’

“‘Trippy liked me after you went away,’ cried another kitten; a white one. ‘He liked me better than he liked you. He let me play with his ears, and sleep on his neck, and he cried for me when I was out of his sight. When somebody threw me in the water, Trippy took me out with his mouth.’

“This kitten’s mother was not at the party, but its snappish old aunt, Black Velvet, was there and she gave it a smart box on the ear. ‘It is a pity,’ said she, ‘if at a famous party like this we older ones cannot be heard for the noise of these pert little minxes. I myself could tell a strange story; a story stranger far than even the one just heard from that very neat puss, Pinky-white, with her Happy and her Unhappy, and her Not a Speck of Dirt! Was she blown off a tree in a whirlwind? Answer me that; or did she go to sea in a baby’s crib? Answer me that.’

“Said Lady Yellow-paw to Black Velvet, ‘Let me hear your strange story, how you were blown off a tree in a whirlwind, and how you came to go to sea in a baby’s crib.’

“Here the cat that hadn’t common sense rushed round the ring and stood on her head and said, ‘I can tell the strangest story of all, for I can tell why I haven’t got common sense.’

“When the lovely Pussyanita had told thus far she stopped suddenly and said to King Grimalkum, “I beg your majesty’s pardon. Oh King Grimalkum, you only wished to hear the story of my great, great, great, great, great, twenty-seven times great grandmother Pinky-white, and I have told, besides this, of the spotted black-and-white kitten who played with the peeked-nosed little black dog’s tail, and of the white 

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