I did run up-stairs, but alas! I met Mary coming down to breakfast with the cat. She had a blue ribbon on her neck—the cat had—and her manner was enough to make one ill. The humility of it, and yet the sly pride—the look she gave me out of the corner of her eye. “Stand aside,” it said, “I have got enough out of you. I have a friend at court now. I've ousted you.”
I did stand aside, then I humbly followed them into the breakfast-room.
Oh! how careful human beings ought to be about new pets. I thought my heart would break as I sat under that table and watched little Mary's hand stealing down with scraps for that Common cat. Once, I used to get all the scraps.
After a while, Mr. and Mrs. Denville came to the table, and then I had to listen to the whole story of the saintly Common cat, how little Mary had just seen her skulking about the Common, and had pointed her out to me. That the poor creature had run when any one went near her, and that early this morning when Mary woke up, there she was in the chair by her bed. “It seems like a lovely miracle,” concluded little Mary in a happy voice.
“How do you account for it, Harold, dear?” asked Mrs. Denville of her husband.
“This cat brought her in,” he said shortly, and he looked under the table at me. “Come here, Black-Face.”
I was terribly proud. Mr. Denville rarely noticed me. I jumped up on a chair beside him, and he looked in my face.
“You brought her in, didn't you?” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
“Oh, meow! meow!” I replied and I laid a paw on his coat sleeve.
“I've heard of such things before,” he went on, still looking me in the eyes. “My mother had a very intelligent tabby cat that brought a sick friend to our barn and carried food out to it till it got well.”