The cats ahead of us were leaving the pine wood, and were filing out between the big trees to the ploughed land. When we reached it, they went skipping and prancing over it to the meadow. Arriving there, the cats all stopped, and we heard Blizzard's upraised voice.
“Friends—all who are invited to be present at the mole-hunt, follow me. All others, go home.”
This last command was meant for Slyboots and me, but we didn't wish to obey it.
“Come on,” whispered Slyboots in my ear, “we'll fool him.”
I ran after her. We two cats were the only ones to leave, and as we rushed along over the cool, dewy grass, Slyboots said to me, “Let's hide down here. They're coming this way.”
I did not think it was quite an honest thing to do, however, I followed her. We pretended to go over the foot-bridge, but instead of that we turned aside, and went in among the alders. Here we found a great clump of ferns, and nestling down among them listened.
I could not help thinking what a lovely night it was, as I lay there. The air seemed so soft against our bodies, and the freshness and the smell of it were so delightful to breathe. The air just felt as if no cats had ever breathed it before. In Boston, one often has a feeling that the air entering one's lungs has been breathed over and over again, till it is quite tired out, and has no life left in it.
It was not a very dark night, and having cats' eyes, we could see plainly the crowd that we had left behind us. Soon they came toward us, just as Slyboots had prophesied. We could hear Joker's loud, silly voice, and Blizzard's crafty one, with an occasional remark in Serena's clear, high-pitched one.
Slyboots and I were just crazy to fathom the mystery of the mole-hunt, so we listened most attentively.
“We don't usually have such a gathering for a mole-hunt,” Blizzard was saying, “but it was so kind and condescending in you to afford us the pleasure of hearing a lecture from you, that every cat in the neighborhood and beyond it wished to honor you.”