“Dear friends,” said Bidelia in a faint little voice, for she was frightened to speak to so many cats, all with their eyes fixed on her and with their tails slightly waving. “Dear friends, with Doctor Traddles’s help I have got together our blessed kittens to help me entertain you, and to prove what great progress they are making in school. First, my dancing class will show you a figure, a new figure, in the cotillion. It is called: The Chase of the Tails.”
’Clipsy, who, being black, had a natural talent for music, and particularly for playing the violin, took his place with his fiddle over his shoulder, precisely as you see the cat in “High, Diddle, Diddle.” Nearly all the kittens stepped out into the middle of the lawn, stuck their tails out straight, and waited. ’Clipsy played a few bars softly and then dashed into a lively air, that made every eye in the place spread its pupil ’way to the beginning of its white line, so exciting was this music.
The Dance.
Instantly every kitten made a rapid, low bow, and then danced a few steps to the right, a few to the left, leaped into the air, turned its soft body half-way around as it came down, and slapped at its own tail with its right forepaw. The music changed into other time, and with it the dancing steps of the kittens changed also. Swinging and swaying, the kittens began to spin around after their tails, keeping perfect time to the exciting music, whirling faster and faster, until all one could see were so many soft, varied-coloured balls of graceful kits, spinning, dashing, running, skipping, snatching after the tails that they never quite caught, never losing the swing of the dance, never losing the fun of the thing, until all the cats looking on were quite wild themselves with the delight of it and pride in their children. Fancy, if one kitten running after its tail is funny and charming, what it must have been to have seen twenty-two kittens, in a circle, trying to catch their tails in a mazy dance, perfectly performed!
“We’ve had the time of our lives!” cried Posty, jumping up in the air himself, and giving a wild mew, because he could not help doing it.
“Let us give Mrs. Bidelia a vote of thanks,” proposed Ban-Ban, remembering how he had been publicly thanked for bringing the cow into Purrington.
“Three cheers instead!” cried Wutz-Butz, who wanted to let off steam in some way.
The three cheers were instantly given, for all the cats felt precisely as Wutz-Butz did, that they must give vent to their feelings, so wrought up by the dance, or fly into small pieces on the spot.
Bidelia dropped a beautiful curtsey. “Thank you, dear friends,” she said. “I am glad that you consider our first social event in Purrington a success. Before you go will you join in a song? The kittens will lead us, because they know it best.”