"Clementina has been suffering for shoes, though her feet don't show with a train. I meant to have saved enough to buy her some, but what with limes and candy, and pencils, and fines for saying 'awful,' I do believe the poor thing would have gone bare-footed all winter, if Nell hadn't given her these beauties," replied Mrs. Alice, proudly surveying her daughter's feet in red kid boots of a somewhat triangular shape.
"I couldn't make them fit very well, because the cotton is all coming out of her toes, and it was hard to measure," explained Mrs. Nell, conscious that shoemaking was not her mission.
"They are just the thing; for I'm afraid my poor Clem is going to have the gout, young as she is. It is in our family, so it is well to be prepared," answered Mrs. Alice, with the beautiful forethought of a maternal heart.
"These muffs are made out of our Tabby's skin. I thought you'd like them as keepsakes, for we all loved her," said Grace, with a pensive sigh, as she smoothed the white fur of a dear departed cat, feeling that black and violet bows would have been more suitable than red and blue for the decoration of these touching memorials.
"I wonder if there isn't a nice place somewhere for good cats when they die? I hope so: for I'm sure they have souls, though they may be little bits of ones," observed Kitty, who felt as if her name was a tie between herself and the pets she most adored.
"I wonder if they have ghosts," said Nell, as if she feared that Tabby's might appear.
A faint "Meou" seemed to float down to the startled girls from some upper region, and for an instant they stood staring about them. Then they laughed like a chime of bells, and accused little Lotty of pinching the kitten in her arms.
"I didn't; it was Tom up dere," protested the child, pointing to the ventilator, from which a round red face was staring at them, like a full moon.
Shrieks of indignation greeted the discovery, and a rain of small articles pelted the countenance of the foe, as it grinned derisively, while a jeering voice called out:
"I don't think much of your old secret. It wasn't worth the fuss you made about it, and I wouldn't have any if I couldn't do better than that."