But some time passed before either said anything; at last, Glumdalkin gave a great yawn, and flapping her tail rather angrily against the cushion, remarked:
'Really, Friskarina, you are dreadfully stupid, to-night; you make noise enough when I want to go to sleep: but now, when I am inclined for a little rational conversation, you sit there as mum and sulky as an old bear.'
Friskarina was used to polite observations from her second cousin once removed, so she very quietly answered that she thought Glumdalkin had been going to take a nap, and that she did not wish to disturb her.
'Well, I do admire that!' exclaimed Glumdalkin; 'you are wonderfully considerate, all at once; now, I think, Miss Friskarina, you have been getting into mischief, and that's the reason you sit so quiet there. I should like to know where you were all this morning, when the pages were running all over the house after you, because the princess wanted you, and nobody could find you? Well, people have strange tastes! I should have thought she would have found the company of a grave, decorous cat, like myself, who knows the ways of the court, and has seen something of society, a great deal more agreeable than that of such a ridiculous, light-headed thing as you are: I declare you make me quite nervous very often, you jump about so! But she never sent for me; so of course I could not go to her. The world's very unlike what it was when I was young—very unlike indeed!' and, giving an odd kind of grunt in her throat, Glumdalkin curled herself round on the other side, as if in a sort of despair at the wickedness of the world.
Friskarina thought she had not much to complain of, but she did not venture to say it; so she answered, quite good-naturedly:
'I am very sorry, cousin Glumdalkin, that I was out when the princess called for me, but indeed I was in no mischief; I was seeing such strange sights, it has made me quite unhappy ever since I came back.'
'Humph!' said Glumdalkin, 'and pray what wonderful things have you been seeing?'
'Why,' replied Friskarina, 'I got uncommonly tired this morning of the palace garden, I know every stick and stone in it so well. I had been racing nine times round the gravel walk, and had got half way round to make up ten, when, luckily, I saw that the gardener had left the outer door ajar; so I thought I might as well take the opportunity of seeing what there was on the other side of the wall; accordingly I peeped out and found that I was in a kind of road, with some such odd looking things, here and there, I don't know what to call them, but I fancy people live in them, for I saw some persons going into one of them. They were not in the least like this house that the princess lives in; I am sure Grandmagnificolowsky, the tall page, could never have stood upright in any one of them—and so black and dismal and dirty they looked!'
'And you went into one of the nasty places, of course?' growled Glumdalkin; 'cottages, child, they are called.'
'You shall hear all, in good time,' answered Friskarina; 'I was peeping about, outside our garden door, rather afraid to venture further, when I saw such a cat come out of one of these cottages, as you call them—O Glumdalkin! it really would have made your heart ache to have seen her. I had no idea there were such cats in the world. It was dreadful to look at her; she was so horribly thin, you might have counted her bones, and as dirty as if she had lived all her life in a coal-hole: she crawled out of the door as if she had hardly strength to walk, and such a thin tail she had; it made me shudder to look at her. I couldn't help going up and asking her what was the matter with her——'