from side to side. This would
frighten the mice and make them run out. Mammy Tittleback stood in the
middle of the floor ready to spring for them the minute they appeared.
One day the boys were doing this, and two mice ran out almost at the
same minute and the same way. Mammy Tittleback caught the first one in
her mouth; they thought she would lose the second one. Not a bit of it.
Quick as a flash she pounced on that one too, and, without letting go
of the one she already had in her teeth, she actually caught the second
one! Two live mice at once in her mouth! They were not alive many
seconds, though; one craunch of Mammy Tittleback's teeth killed them
both, and she dropped them on the floor, and was all ready to catch the
next ones. Did anybody ever hear of such a mouser as that?

Another story also Phil told me about the kittens which I should have
found it hard to believe if I had read it in a book; but which I know
must be true, because Phil told it. One day, after the kittens had grown
so big that they used to go everywhere, the children went off for a
long walk in the fields, and four of the kittens went with them. When
the children climbed fences the kittens crawled through, and they had no
trouble till they came to a brook. The children just tucked up their
trousers and waded through, first putting the kittens all down together
in a hollow at the roots of a tree, and telling them to stay still there
till they came back. They hadn't gone many steps on the other side when
they heard first one splash, then two, then three; and, looking round,
what should they see but three of those little kittens swimming for
dear life across the brook, their poor little noses hardly above the
water? It was as much as ever they got across; but they did, and
scrambled out on the other side looking like drowned rats. These were
Spitfire and Gregory Second and Blacky; Tottontail was the fourth. He
did not appear, and he was not to be seen, either, where they had put
him down on the other side. At last they spied him racing up stream as
hard as he could go. He ran till he came to a place where the brook was
only a little thread of water in the grass, and there he very sensibly
stepped across; the only one of the whole party, cats or children,
who got over without wet feet. Now who can help believing that
Tottontail thought it all out in his head, just as a boy or a girl would
who had never learned to swim? It was very wonderful that Spi