“However the next day I made out what to do, and I took the basket with me and walked off to the parish school—the girl’s school, you know—and I said to the mistress, ‘How many little girls are there at school to-day?’
“‘Exactly 250, sir.’
“‘And have they all been very good all day?’
“‘As good as gold, sir.’
“So I waited outside the door with my basket, and as each little girl came out, I just popped a soft little kitten into her hands! Oh, what joy there was! The little girls went all dancing home, nursing their kittens, and the whole air was full of purring! Then, the next morning, I went to the school, before it opened, to ask the little girls how the kittens had behaved in the night. And they all arrived sobbing and crying, and their faces and hands were all covered with scratches, and they had the kittens wrapped up in their pinafores to keep them from scratching any more. And they sobbed out, ‘The kittens have been scratching us all night, all the night.’
“So then I said to myself, ‘What a nice little girl Maggie is. Now I see why she sent all those gloves, and why there are four times as many gloves as kittens!’ and I said loud to the little girls, ‘Never mind, my dear children, do your lessons very nicely, and don’t cry any more, and when school is over, you’ll find me at the door, and you shall see what you shall see!’
“So, in the evening, when the little girls came running out, with the kittens still wrapped up in their pinafores, there was I, at the door, with a big sack! And, as each little girl came out, I just popped into her hand two pairs of gloves! And each little girl unrolled her pinafore and took out an angry little kitten, spitting and snarling, with its claws sticking out like a hedgehog. But it hadn’t time to scratch, for, in one moment, it found all its four claws popped into nice soft warm gloves! And then the kittens got quite sweet-tempered and gentle, and began purring again!
“So the little girls went dancing home again, and the next morning they came dancing back to school. The scratches were all healed, and they told me ‘The kittens have been good!’ And, when any kitten wants to catch a mouse, it just takes off one of its gloves; and if it wants to catch two mice, it takes off two gloves; and if it wants to catch three mice, it takes off three gloves; and if it wants to catch four mice, it takes off all its gloves. But the moment they’ve caught the mice, they pop their gloves on again, because they know we can’t love them without their gloves. For, you see ‘gloves’ have got ‘love’ inside them—there’s none outside!
“So all the little girls said, ‘Please thank Maggie, and we send her 250 loves, and 1000 kisses in return for her 250 kittens and her 1000 loves!!’ And I told them in the wrong order! and they said they hadn’t.
“Your loving old Uncle,
“C. L. D.