"Did I say there was?" asked the kitten. "I only said I found myself there. Well, I stayed there some time. It was the happiest hour of my life. But, as I was washing my face after one of the most delicious herring's heads you ever tasted, I noticed that on nails all round the room were hung skins—and they were cat skins," it added slowly. "Well may you tremble!"
Dolly hadn't trembled. She had only shaken the kitten to make it speak faster.
"Well, I stood there rooted to the ground with horror; and then came a sort of horrible scramble-rush, and a barking and squeaking, and a terrible monster stood before me. It was something like a dog and something like a broom, something like being thrown out of the larder by cook—I can't describe it. It caught me up, and in less than a moment it had hung my tabby skin on a nail behind the door.
"I don't believe a word of it."
"I crept out of that lovely fairyland a cat without a skin. And that's how I came to be white."
"I don't quite see——" began Dolly.
"No? Why, what would your mother do if some one took off your dress, and hung it on a nail where she could not get it?"
"Buy me another, I suppose."
"Exactly. But when my mother took me to the cat-skin shop, they were, unfortunately, quite out of tabby dresses in my size, so I had to have a white one."