“It does look nice and soft,” said Minette looking at it.
“And wouldn’t it roll finely,” said Tompkins.
One day Mary tried to knit, but her hands got so sticky that the stitches kept dropping off the needles. She got very hot and cross. “Bother, bother, bother!” she cried at last and flung the knitting down and rushed off into the garden.
The ball of wool was still on the table, but as the knitting was on the floor you may guess it didn’t take those kittens long to pull it down. It bounced off the table and came rolling towards them. It really looked almost like some live animal coming at them, and the two kittens arched their backs and looked quite fierce. When it stopped Tompkins said to Minette, “What a silly to be frightened of a ball of wool,” and Minette answered, “You were frightened, I was only pretending.” But this argument didn’t last long for there was the lovely fluffy ball on the ground waiting to be played with. Tompkins snatched it first and patted it round a chair. Then Minette tried to bite it, and when it rolled away they were like boys after a football, and it was sent all over the room and twisted round each leg of the table.
You see, all cats love pretending even when they are quite babies, so Tompkins and Minette pretended to be grown-up cats chasing a mouse until that bold Tompkins suggested, “It’s really too big for a mouse, let’s call it a rat.” And they grew quite fierce as they hunted it, giving savage miaous and growls just like big cats. But after a little the rat seemed to shrink into a mouse and the mouse into nothing at all for the wool had all come unwound.
It never does to give way to temper, does it? and when Mary returned she was to find it out. She came back and brought her mother to help her with the knitting, and pick up all her stitches for her. They found two tired little kittens with sweet faces and big innocent eyes, and the wool in a perfectly hopeless tangle all over the room.
“What did Mary’s mother say?” you ask. I am afraid she laughed. I know she didn’t blame the kittens, and Mary had to get her wool out of a tangle and wind it up herself. Not for very long though, because when her mother thought she had suffered enough for her temper and carelessness she helped her and they soon got it finished. Mary gave the kittens a good scolding, calling them “nasty, mean mischievous little things.”
CHAPTER II
TWO THIEVES
I am afraid Tompkins was rather inclined to be greedy. He used to watch his mother Salome having her afternoon saucer of milk and he just longed to have some too. It looked so nice and creamy and he was so tired of his own food. He used to watch her lapping it and wish somehow he could get it instead.