What about the cat?” asked the little princess of her eldest maid.
“It is sitting on the sunny side of the garden wall, watching the butterflies. It meowed for three of the prettiest to fall into its mouth, and would you believe it, that is just what happened. A green, a blue, a pink shaded with gold, all went down pussy’s red throat.”
The princess smiled. “What about the cat?” she questioned her second maid.
“She is seated in your honorable father’s chair of state, and your honorable father’s first body-slave is scratching her back with your father’s own back-scratcher, made of the purest gold and ivory.”
The princess laughed outright. She pattered gracefully into another room. There she saw the youngest daughter of her foster-mother.
“What about the cat?” she asked for the third time.
“The cat! Oh, she has gone to Shinku’s duck farm. The ducks love her so that when they see her, they swim to shore and embrace her with their wings. Four of them combined to make a raft and she got upon their backs and went down-stream with them. They met some of the ducklings on the way and she patted them to death with her paws. How the big ducks quacked!”
“That is a good story,” quoth the princess.
She went into the garden and, seeing one of the gardeners, said: “What about the cat?”
“It is frisking somewhere under the cherry tree, but you would not know it if you saw it,” replied the gardener.