nd starving, and added that
he would be ashamed to keep an animal merely to ill-treat it. They have
a quarrel about him twice a week on the average. It will probably come
to blows one of these days."

Jephson appeared much surprised by this story. He remained thoughtful
and silent. I asked him if he would like to hear any more, and as he
offered no active opposition I went on. (Maybe he was asleep; that idea
did not occur to me at the time.)

I told him of my grandmother's cat, who, after living a blameless life
for upwards of eleven years, and bringing up a family of something like
sixty-six, not counting those that died in infancy and the water-butt,
took to drink in her old age, and was run over while in a state of
intoxication (oh, the justice of it! ) by a brewer's dray. I have read
in temperance tracts that no dumb animal will touch a drop of alcoholic
liquor. My advice is, if you wish to keep them respectable, don't give
them a chance to get at it. I knew a pony--But never mind him; we are
talking about my grandmother's cat.

A leaky beer-tap was the cause of her downfall. A saucer used to be
placed underneath it to catch the drippings. One day the cat, coming in
thirsty, and finding nothing else to drink, lapped up a little, liked it,
and lapped a little more, went away for half an hour, and came back and
finished the saucerful. Then sat down beside it, and waited for it to
fill again.

From that day till the hour she died, I don't believe that cat was ever
once quite sober. Her days she passed in a drunken stupor before the
kitchen fire. Her nights she spent in the beer cellar.

My grandmother, shocked and grieved beyond expression, gave up her barrel
and adopted bottles. The cat, thus condemned to enforced abstinence,
meandered about the house for a day and a half in a disconsolate,
quarrelsome mood. Then she disappeared, returning at eleven o'clock as
tight as a drum.

Where she went, and how she managed to procure the drink, we never
discovered; but the same programme was repeated every day. Some time
during the morning she would contrive to elude our vigilance and escape;
and late every evening she would come reeling home across the fields in a
condition that I will not sully my pen by attempting to describe.

It was on Saturday night that she met the sad end to which I have before
alluded. She must have been very drunk, for the man told us that, in
consequence of the darkness, and