The poor Chough manifested great pleasure at being again in the barrack kitchen, and followed the fortunes of the regiment until his master's death, when we lost sight of the yellow-billed yellow-legged Cornish Chough.
THE KITTENS—BLACKY AND SNOWDROP.
"Guess what we have, Mamma! Guess!" cried I and my sister, as we ran into the dining-room, with something wrapped up in each of our pinafores. So Mamma felt, and found that we had something alive; then she guessed guinea-pigs, then rabbits; at last we rolled out on the carpet two little kittens.
They were such soft, pretty little things; one was black and the other white. I chose the black one, and my sister had the white. They lived chiefly in the nursery, and were soon very familiar, and quite at home.
My black one, however, was pleased to be much fonder of my sister than of me; it particularly insisted on sleeping on my sister's bed; and we sometimes changed beds to see if it would follow her. Blacky would jump on the bed, come and look at my face, waving his tail about in the air, and seeing that it was his own master, he would bound off the bed and go and look in the other, and being satisfied that my sister was there, he would curl himself up at her back. In consequence of some illness in the nursery, my sister was sent to another room, and Blacky not finding her in the nursery, went and looked into all the bed-rooms until he found her. Snowdrop, as we called the white cat, used to sleep in a large wardrobe, rolled up upon some of the clothes. They were both very fond of getting into cupboards and drawers, and often startled us, and others, by springing out, when drawers and closet-doors were opened in different rooms; we were obliged to forbid them the drawing-room, because they would get on the chimney-piece, and on the top of a book-case where there was a good deal of china, and we thought they would certainly throw down and break it all in their rough games.
At the time we had these cats, we had also the jackdaw and hawk; and Blacky and Snowdrop often went to have a game with Jacky, who liked them; they used to run after him round his bush, and amuse themselves with whisking their tails about, and seeing him peck at them. But when they tried the same game with the hawk, they found a very different creature to deal with; for the savage bird darted at the playful little creatures, and very nearly bit off Blacky's tail; and afterwards, if he saw them in the garden, although they did not offer to approach his stump, he would slyly steal among the shrubs and bushes, till he got near enough to them to make a dart at their tails, and many a savage bite he gave them.
We did not keep these cats long. Blacky disappeared entirely; whether some one stole him for the luck of having a black cat, or what became of the poor little fellow we did not know. Snowdrop was fond of running on the top of the garden-walls, and of hunting little birds about the roads; and it seems strange that so active an animal as a cat should allow itself to be run over, but Snowdrop, in hunting a bird across the railway, which ran on the other side of our garden wall, was actually killed by the train.