gth of the window-sill. It then became the
fly's turn. He was to get up and fly about in the window, so as to
recover himself a little; then she was to catch him again, and roll him
softly all along the window-sill, as she had done before.

It was plain that the cat knew the rules of her game perfectly well, and
enjoyed it keenly. It was equally plain that the fly could not make head
or tail of what it was all about. If it had been able to do so it would
have gone to play in the upper part of the window, where the cat could
not reach it. Perhaps it was always hoping to get through the glass, and
escape that way; anyhow, it kept pretty much to the same pane, no matter
how often it was rolled. At last, however, the fly, for some reason or
another, did not reappear on the pane, and the cat began looking
everywhere to find it. Her annoyance when she failed to do so was
extreme. It was not only that she had lost her fly, but that she could
not conceive how she should have ever come to do so. Presently she noted
a small knot in the woodwork of the sill, and it flashed upon her that
she had accidentally killed the fly, and that this was its dead body. She
tried to move it gently with her paw, but it was no use, and for the time
she satisfied herself that the knot and the fly had nothing to do with
one another. Every now and then, however, she returned to it as though
it were the only thing she could think of, and she would try it again.
She seemed to say she was certain there had been no knot there before--she
must have seen it if there had been; and yet, the fly could hardly have
got jammed so firmly into the wood. She was puzzled and irritated beyond
measure, and kept looking in the same place again and again, just as we
do when we have mislaid something. She was rapidly losing temper and
dignity when suddenly we saw the fly reappear from under the cat's
stomach and make for the window-pane, at the very moment when the cat
herself was exclaiming for the fiftieth time that she wondered where that
stupid fly ever could have got to. No man who has been hunting twenty
minutes for his spectacles could be more delighted when he suddenly finds
them on his own forehead. "So that's where you were," we seemed to hear
her say, as she proceeded to catch it, and again began rolling it very
softly without hurting it, under her paw. My friend and I both noticed
that the cat, in spite of her perplexity, never so much as hinted