“Oh dear! oh dear!” said Linda, “please don’t. The carrots have punished me till I am quite sore.”
“Cats, cats, one and all, Tabby, tortoise-shell, come when I call, Gray and yellow, black and white Cats and kittens, come hither to-night.”
Ah! all the cats and kittens in the world must have come. So many! And they all thronged round her, and sat upon her shoulders, and clung round her arms.
“All the cats in the world hate you,” said Topsy.
“We do! we do! we do!” mewed the cats. “She never cares what becomes of poor cats and kittens.”
Then the cats tumbled over each other, and tumbled over Linda, and crowded round her and upon her, until she was sitting under a heap of cats, with only her face peeping out, and Topsy was crouching in front, looking fiercely at her.
“Now that you cannot stir,” said Topsy, “I am going to scratch you.”
“Oh! oh! oh!” shrieked Linda, and she gave such a start that all the cats fell down upon the ground; and at that moment she opened her eyes, and found herself in her bed, with her mother standing beside her.
“What is the matter?” asked her mother, for she had heard Linda scream.
“Oh! oh! oh!” sobbed Linda, “I have had such a horrid dream.”
“Well, it was only a dream. You are awake now, and I am with you.”
“Every one in the world hates me, even the cats and the carrots,” sobbed Linda, and bit by bit she told her mother all her dream.
“It was such a horrid dream, and I was so frightened,” said Linda, “I can’t think why it came.”
“I will tell you,” said her mother; “it came out of your own heart. You had been thinking of the words I said to you, that every one would dislike you but myself. I am glad that you have had this dream, for it shows me that my words have sunk into my little girl’s heart, and I hope now that she will try to improve.”
And she did try, and whenever she was inclined to do any selfish act she thought of her wonderful dream, and said to herself, “I should not wish all the world to be like the cats and the carrots.”
“That’s a good story,” said Mary Frances to the Queen. “I shall try to remember it.”
“It is a good story,” replied the Queen, smiling; “but we have still better, as you shall hear.”
Here a page boy who sat on a stool at the foot of the Story Lady began to fidget, as if to ask a question.