“I had forgotten there were strangers there now. And they treated me as a stray cat, and drummed me out when I dared to put my nose over the threshold.
“What could I do, Shireen? I could not endure the pangs of hunger, and though I hung about the garden of my old home for days, and made many a plaintive but useless appeal to the new-comers, I was forced at last to cast aside the mantle of virtue and become a thief. Yes, I even broke into the new people’s pigeon-loft and stole a bird. Then I took to this evil existence, and since then, alas! I have never been inside a human habitation except to steal.”
“Well, Zulina, it is very sad,” I said; “but I think you should try to reform even yet, and some kind lady might take pity on you.”
“No, no, no,” sighed Zulina, “I am but a homeless waif and stray, and my fate, I fear, will be to die in the street, or be torn to pieces by dogs.”
“I’m going to hope for better things for you, Zulina,” I insisted. “But good-bye. Yonder is the grey dawn stealing up into the sky, and I think I hear the milkman’s cry in a distant street. I must try to find my master’s hotel. Good-bye.”
It was a long distance round, but my instinct was unerring, and finally I found myself trotting up the correct street, and soon after sitting in the area doorway.
Down came the milkman with his rattling cans, and in a minute or two, Biddy, with her hair in papers, and looking very sleepy, opened the door.
While Biddy and the milkman were interchanging a few courtesies, I slipped quietly into the house and made my way as fast as I could upstairs to the second floor.
I soon spied my master’s boots, and mewed at the door.
It was opened in a moment, and in I popped, purring as loudly as I knew how to.