ee. She might have sent them down to the burdocks to
pick snails quite well, but she would take them out walking with her
instead. They were picked up (all four of them) by two long-legged Irish
boys, who put them into a basket and took them home. I do not think the
young gentlemen meant any harm, for they provided plenty of food, and
took them to bed with them. They set my daughter at liberty next day,
and she spoke very handsomely of the young gentlemen, and said they had
cured the skins with saltpetre, and were stuffing them when she left.
But the subject was always an awkward one.

Number five is still living. He is the best hand at a fight with a snake
that I know.

Numbers six and seven went to Covent Garden in a hamper. They say
black-beetles are excellent eating.

The whole seven had a narrow escape with their lives just after Sybil
left us. They over-ate themselves on snails, and Mrs. Hedgehog had to
stay at home and nurse them. I kept my eye on our neighbours and brought
her the news.

"Christian has come home," I said, one day. "The Queen has given him a
pardon."

"Then he _did_ take the pheasants' eggs?" said Mrs. Hedgehog.

"Certainly not," said I. "In the first place it wasn't eggs, and in the
second place it was Black Basil who took whatever it was, and he has
confessed to it."

"Then if Christian didn't do it, how is it that he has been forgiven?"
said Mrs. Hedgehog.

"I can't tell you," said I; "but so it is. And he is at this moment with
the clergywoman and the tinker-mother."

"Where is Sybil?" asked Mrs. Hedgehog.

I did not know then, and I am not very clear about her now. I never saw
her again, but either I heard that she had married Black Basil, and that
they had gone across the water to some country where the woods are
bigger than they are here, or I have dreamt it in one of my winter naps.

I am inclined to think it must be true, because I always regarded Sybil
as somewhat proud and unsociable, and I think she would like a big wood
and very few neighbours.

But really when one sleeps for several months at a stretch it is not
very easy to be accurate about one's dreams.

FOOTNOTES:

Footnote B: _Patteran_ = the gipsy "trail."

Footnote C: "Poknees," gipsy word for magistrate.

TOOTS AND BOOTS.

* * * * *

CHAPTER I.

My name is Toots. Why, I have not the slightest idea. But I suppose very
few people--cats or otherwise--a