"Of course that couldn't be done, because she had to wait for it to grow again; but Mrs. Man on the next farm wrapped her up in an old shawl, and she had to stay in a basket until her hair grew, else she'd have frozen to death, for we had a terrible hard winter that season. When the hair did come out it was uneven, of course, and she was the worst looking cat you ever saw.
"Mr. Man was shaving the first morning Mrs. Pussy Cat came out of the basket, and he hadn't seen her since she had been to the barber's.
"She jumped up on a chair by the side of him, thinking he would stroke her fur as he always used to do, when the poor man got one glimpse of her, and it nearly scared him into hysterics. I suppose he thought it was a ghost, or something like that, for she looked bad enough to be almost anything.
"He gave a yell, and jumped in the air. That scared Mrs. Pussy Cat, and she screamed as she leaped out of the chair. Then Mr. Man went after her with that big razor in his hand.
"I don't know how far he chased her; but Mr. Towser said that Mrs. Pussy Cat ran more than five miles before she stopped, and when she sneaked back home that night, I'm thinking she felt a good deal as Mr. Crow did when he tried to make folks believe peacock feathers were growing in his tail."
MR. CROW'S DECEIT.
"I have heard a great many stories which Mr. Crow has told; but never one about him," your Aunt Amy interrupted. "If he tried to deceive the other birds, I surely would like to know about it."
"Well, he did," Mrs. Mouser Cat said emphatically, sitting bolt upright; "but of course he doesn't like to have the story told, so I had rather you wouldn't let him know I mentioned it.
"I don't know how he happened to get it into his head to do such a thing, for, as a rule, he spends the most of his time over in the big tree telling stories or making poetry; but he grew foolish once, and whenever anybody came where he was, he said he had strange growing feathers, and the doctor believed he was turning into a peacock.