She had never taken a husband to herself, although there had been plenty of suitors—the snug little home and the smart, pretty girl were tempting enough for anyone.
Why she had not married was the secret of her life; and everyone in the neighbourhood had tried to guess it!
One evening in late autumn, when storm and rain raged without, there came to her a little kitten in the last stages of exhaustion, which crept into the shelter of the outhouse and next morning introduced itself to her as a new arrival into the world.
It was extremely timid, but starving and hungry—it gulped down everything she placed before it.
She saw that it was a little spotted he-cat with almost as many colours as the rainbow, and with a tail so long that it could wind it round the neck like a feather-boa.
The midwife adopted “Terror,” not because she was particularly fond of cats, but because of late she had begun to feel so terribly lonely....
After Black’s departure from home Tiny had a very rough time. He was soon pursued by hunger, and there was no one there to help him, for his other brothers and sisters had also left. Even Grey Puss, who occasionally let him share her spoil, had vanished without trace.
One day, just as he is sneaking through the doorway of the turf-house—under whose mouldering thatch he still remains—he finds himself suddenly face to face with a tall, two-legged being who is too big for him to see all at once. The man throws his coat over him and he disappears as into the blackest night. He is squeezed and stifled, and meanwhile carried along—until at last he succeeds in diving head first through a long, dangling nozzle—a coat-sleeve.