One of these days at breakfast time there came a letter from Auntie May, and they told me my mother was dead. Kitty tied a bit of black ribbon round my paw. They don't understand. I kept it on till dinner-time to please the child.
A month later some one told me that Auntie May had found Zobeide again at a cat-show at the Crystal Palace—or at least a cat that she was sure was Zobeide from some secret signs she knew. She took a prize, anyway. I gather that Auntie May was not able to make good her claim on the cat. Fancy, nearly two years afterwards! Why, I am very much altered since the day I was here first, and whacked Great-Uncle Tomyris in the looking-glass in Beatrice's room. I saw him again the other day. He looks older too, if a ghost can look older. I am not afraid of him any more. I am bored by him, and don't care to raise so much as a paw to him.
I am really a very happy cat. I never worry. I eat brown bread. The only bad thing that could happen to me, I think, would be that my new mistress, Rosamond Gilmour, should go and choose a Mr. Fox for herself, and then I should be thrown on the world again.
Of course, she may marry, but I believe in that case she would take me with her, and luckily the tribe of Foxes is not common.
THE END
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