doors—not of the bad. Mrs. Beulah Black is present, and has something to relate which all will like to hear.’”

“In me, my dear Lady Yellow-paw, you see a child of the unfortunate Pussy Gray who when watching for butterflies was stung in the eye by a bumble-bee and went crazy, and ran away. There were three of us born on the same day, namely: Lily, Dinah Dusky and myself, Beulah Black. Pussy Gray was one of the best of mothers. She herself cared neither for rats, mice, nor moles. She liked birds and bugs and was very fond of butterflies. But she would sit long watching at a hole to catch mice or moles for us, and then she would bring them to us, and show us how to play with them, and stand looking at us in her motherly way. She grew thin from staying in to take care of us. We were a quarrelsome set.

“I don’t know what became of Lily, but Dinah Dusky went when she was very young to live in a corn store. I stayed at a house nearer my mother’s house, and it was well that I did, for at the time she got stung in the eye by a bumble-bee, she had another young family, and I was able to go in and take care of them, and to punish them when they needed punishment. I was then a mother myself with my first little brood around me.

“I remember the day well. My mother left the family and went into the garden to catch butterflies. If she did not see any butterflies it was her custom to stand still and listen for the sound of their wings. She was doing so when that sad thing happened to her. My sister, Dinah Dusky, had come that day to see my dear little beauties and we two went out together to catch bugs for them. Our mother was in the garden not far from us. She stood stock still. She had heard the sound of a butterfly’s wings. An instant more and she would have turned her head.

“Then it was that the bumble-bee stung her eye. She ran. We ran. We could not catch her. We could not think what made her behave so. She ran this way and that way, over fences, back again, through bushes, over bushes, across fields, and at last away she went out of sight and was never heard from afterwards. Every day my sister Dinah Dusky and I went forth to look for our mother, hoping to bring her home to her young family.

“It was when we had been in the fields looking for her that we saved ourselves by my sister’s quickness in opening a door. I will explain how this happened.

“My sister and I went into a swamp to look for our mother, and we caught sight of a rabbit there. We lay down close to the ground, 

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