Round the rotten cover grew a border of sweet-smelling wild camomile, in the midst of which stuck up a few stray blades of rye. An occasional bee or butterfly, attracted by the scent, settled on the odorous blooms.
When a little pearl-winged “Blue-bird” appeared dancing above them, the kittens all deserted their fly-catching and with one accord sprang high in the air after it.
On this occasion Black disappeared abruptly and mysteriously into the bowels of the earth! A little dust from the broken board rose in the air behind him.
The others continued the chase, and Big-kitten succeeded in capturing the butterfly; he was lucky enough to clap his paws upon it as he clutched wildly in the air. In the silence following the capture, it was carefully and thoroughly investigated. The wings came off, and the body came in two ... and Big, in his scientific ardour, even tried to find out what was inside!
They missed Black occasionally; but after all, there was plenty without him!
Exhausted with fly- and butterfly-catching, the children lie down on the lid and rest in the sun, listening with puzzled frowns to a new and strange sound which comes from beneath them. It sounds like a toad splashing through wet grass in the rain....
Black-kitten paddles round in the filthy liquid manure. He has not the slightest notion of what it is he is treading in; but he uses his legs vigorously, for otherwise his nose complains that it lacks air. He has several times reached the walls and sought vainly to escape; but now luckily he stumbles against the wooden pump, the wood of which offers a better surface for his claws than the hard, unyielding bricks.
He pulls himself up out of the cesspool and climbs towards the streak of light, until he reaches a cross-piece, where he is able to snatch a breathing-space. He whimpers and miauws, summons up strength, and climbs farther—and as there is ample space between pump and lid, owing to the straw that once supported the pump in the hole having almost rotted away, he suddenly dumbfounds his callous relatives by pushing up his head into their midst.
It is the only part of him which is still at all recognizable: the rest of his black fur has become quite brown! He looks like a chocolate cat—but he smells otherwise! His brothers and sisters shrink back from him, and spit and hiss as if he were a stranger.
When Grey Puss later on miauwed herself into view with a captured mouse and warm milk, he was at last declared genuine, and in addition enfolded in her arms. But Big shirked his washing duties that afternoon! He licked his mother, it is true, but only on the neck and in the ears; no one else received attention from his lavish tongue.