ignity of her poses?

Smiling gently and speaking in well-chosen language, she said to
Mytyl:

"Good-morning, miss!... How well you look this morning!..."

And the Children patted her like anything.

Tylo kept watching the Cat from the other end of the room:

"Now that she's standing on her hind-legs like a man," he muttered,
"she looks just like the Devil, with her pointed ears, her long tail
and her dress as black as ink!" And he could not help growling between
his teeth. "She's also like the village chimney-sweep," he went on,
"whom I loathe and detest and whom I shall never take for a real man,
whatever my little gods may say.... It's lucky," he added, with a
sigh, "that I know more about a good many things than they do!"

But suddenly, no longer able to master himself, he flew at the Cat and
shouted, with a loud laugh that was more like a roar:

"I'm going to frighten Tylette! Bow, wow, wow!"

But the Cat, who was dignified even when still an animal, now thought
herself called to the loftiest destinies. She considered that the time
had come to raise a tall barrier between herself and the Dog, who had
never been more than an ill-bred person in her eyes; and, stepping
back in disdain, she just said:

"Sir, I don't know you."

Tylo gave a bound under the insult, whereupon the Cat bristled up,
twisting her whiskers under her little pink nose (for she was very
proud of those two pale blotches which gave a special touch to her
dark beauty); and then, arching her back and sticking up her tail, she
hissed out, "Fft! Fft!" and stood stock-still on the chest of drawers,
like a dragon on the lid of a Chinese vase.

Tyltyl and Mytyl screamed with laughter; but the quarrel would
certainly have had a bad ending if, at that moment, a great thing had
not happened. At eleven o'clock in the evening, in the middle of that
winter's night, a great light, the light of the noon-day sun, glowing
and dazzling, burst into the cottage.

"Hullo, there's daylight!" said the little boy, who no longer knew
what to make of things. "What will Daddy say?"

But, before the Fairy had time to set him right, Tyltyl understood;
and, full of wonderment, he knelt before the latest vision that
bewitched his eyes.

At the window, in the center of a great halo of sunshine, there rose
slowly, like a tall golden sheaf, a maiden of surpassing loveliness!
Gleaming veils covered her figure without hiding its beauty; her bare
arms, stretched in t