This morning when we started to drive she said, “Black-Face, suppose we go and call on your relatives?”
Now, I thought this was a perfectly sweet thing for her to say, so I mewed my approval, and Mary spoke to her nurse, and the nurse told the coachman to drive us to Mrs. Darley's.
Oh! how my heart beat when I saw that big green hall door. Just as soon as Gerty, the house-maid, opened it, I sprang out of the carriage and was into the house like a flash. Up the steps, and into the sitting-room I went. There they were, all on the window-seat—all the dear cats basking in the warm spring sunlight. I jumped in the midst of them. Didn't I give them a fright!
My dear mother uttered a little cry, my father drew himself up severely, and Serena forgot her fine manners for once, and gave me a smart cuff.
“Isn't that like Black-Face?” mewed Jimmy Dory; “but I'll make her say, 'I beg pardon,'” and he took me round the neck by his two paws till I squealed.
“Well, my dear kitten,” said my father, when we had all got ourselves straightened out, “how are you, and how are you getting on?”
This was a very proud moment for me. Of course I had been dreadfully homesick away from them all, but still it was worth going through everything to come back and be treated with so much consideration. They were all actually sitting around, waiting for me to speak. Now that had never happened to me before in my short life, and I licked my lips, and tried to speak slowly so as to make the pleasure last.
“To begin with,” I drawled, “I have nearly died of loneliness away from you all.”
“MY MOTHER BEGAN TO POLISH OFF MY HEAD.”