[When Blackie reached the top she could look up and see the sky through a crack.]
“There is so much noise down there in the street, and I am up here so high, that I don’t believe they can hear me,” thought the black cat. “I may as well keep still.”
Then she went to the other side of the roof, to where she could look down in the back yards of the houses. She saw no one there, in any of them, and after she had mewed several times she also gave that up.
“Oh, dear!” thought Blackie. “I don’t know what I shall do. Suppose it rains during the night? Well, of course I could go down in the empty house again, so I would be dry, anyhow. But I want something to eat. Oh, dear! Running away, even to learn how to jump high fences, is not half as nice as I thought it would be. Speckle did not tell me I would have bad adventures. I thought they would all be nice ones.”
Blackie walked over toward one of the end houses in the row. She was wondering what she would do, when, all at once, another and the same kind of a scuttle cover as the one she had pushed to one side, was opened in the roof in front of her, and up popped the head of a gray-haired lady, who had a kind, pleasant face, and who looked at Blackie through large spectacles.
“Why, it’s a cat—I do believe!” exclaimed the lady, whose name, as Blackie learned later, was Mrs. Thompson. “I was wondering what was making that noise, walking around on the roof. I’m glad I came up to see. It’s a cat!”
“Of course I’m a cat,” said Blackie to herself. “I hope I don’t look like a dog.”
Of course Mrs. Thompson did not hear Blackie say this, for the cat only thought it to herself, just as we often think things without speaking them out loud.