other is very ill.' Full of dreadful
anticipations, I tore home, and on arriving found Delia lying on the
sofa in a violent fit of hysterics. It was fully an hour before she
recovered sufficiently to tell me what had happened. Her account runs
thus:--

"'After you went to church,' she began, 'I made the custard pudding,
jelly and blancmange for dinner, heard the children their collects, and
had just sat down with the intention of writing a letter to mother, when
I heard a very pathetic mew coming, so I thought, from under the sofa.
Thinking it was some stray cat that had got in through one of the
windows, I tried to entice it out, by calling "Puss, puss," and making
the usual silly noise people do on such occasions. No cat coming out and
the mewing still continuing, I knelt down and peered under the sofa.
There was no cat there. Had it been night I should have been very much
afraid, but I could scarcely reconcile myself to the idea of ghosts
with the room filled with sunshine. Resuming my seat I went on with my
writing, but not for long. The mewing grew nearer. I distinctly heard
something crawl out from under the sofa; there was then a pause, during
which you could have heard the proverbial pin fall, and then something
sprang upon me and dug its claws in my knees. I looked down, and to my
horror and distress, perceived, standing on its hind-legs, pawing my
clothes, a large, tabby cat, without a head--the neck terminating in a
mangled stump. The sight so appalled me that I don't know what happened,
but nurse and the children came in and found me lying on the floor in
hysterics. Can't we leave the house at once?'

"_Wednesday, November 30th._--Left No. ---- Lower Seedley Road at 2 p.m.
Had an awful scurry to get things packed in time, and dread opening
certain of the packing-cases lest we shall find all the crockery
smashed. Just as we were starting Delia cried out that she had left her
reticule behind, and I was despatched in search of it. I searched
everywhere--till I was worn out, for I know what Delia is--and was
leaving the premises in full anticipation of being sent back again, when
there was a loud commotion in the hall, just as if a dog had suddenly
pounced on a cat, and the next moment a large tabby, with the head hewn
away as Delia had described, rushed up to me and tried to spring on to
my shoulders. At this juncture one of the servants cautiously opened the
hall door from without, and informed me I was wante