This was very naughty, of course; but the best trained cats have their faults. One morning Kit ate her breakfast with great relish, washed her face and paws, smoothed down her fur coat, and went into the parlor to take a nap in the big arm-chair.
The sun shone full in her face; and she blinked and purred and felt very good-natured; for, only the night before, she had caught her first rat, and for such a valiant deed had been praised and petted to her heart's content.
Well, Kit Midge fell asleep in the chair, with one little pink ear turned back, that she might wake easily, and a black tail curled round her paws. By and by one eye opened; and, peeping out, she saw her mistress walking across the room with a dear little yellow-bird in her hand, which she placed on a plant that stood on the top shelf of the plant-stand.
Now, Midge had looked with longing eyes for weeks upon a lovely canary, which sang on its perch far out of her reach; and I suppose she thought this was the same bird among the green leaves.
But she was a wise little cat: so she slept on, with both eyes open, until her mistress had left the room. Then Kitty came down from the chair, and, creeping softly to the stand, made a spring, and seized birdie between her teeth. Then, jumping down, she dropped the bird on the carpet, smelled it, looked ashamed, and sneaked away.
It was only a stuffed bird; and when her mistress, who had been peeping in at the door all the time, said, laughing, "O Kit Midge, I am perfectly ashamed of you!" Kitty just ran out of the room, and did not show herself the rest of the day.
Kit Midge was never known to catch a bird after that.
WHAT can be prettier than a brood of chickens with a good motherly hen, like the one in this picture! See how the little chicks nestle and play about their mother! and see what a watchful eye she has over them! But some chickens do not have such kind mothers, as you shall hear.
There was a little black one in our yard this spring, which none of the mother-hens would own. They would peck at it, and drive it away, till it was almost starved. Aunt Jennie told our little Hettie that she might have it for her own, if she would take care of it.
So Hettie put the chicken in a cage, with some wool to cover it, and fed it several times every day, till it came to know her. When it was let out of the cage, it would follow her about wherever she went.