* * *

JUNO.

Juno was the cat. We all knew perfectly well that there never had been
such a cat as Juno. Not that she was so fine-looking, or so expensive. She
would never have taken a prize at a cat show, unless it might have been
the booby prize. She was the very plainest kind of a brindled cat, and she
wandered into our house from the street during her early kittenhood and
calmly established herself in mother's work-basket.

From that time on Juno had been the friend and playmate of the younger
generation. She never seemed like an animal to any of us. Many a time I
have heard Ned apologize for having unintentionally hurt Juno, with the
exclamation:

"Oh, excuse me, Juno, I didn't mean to do that!"

After which Juno always purred softly, and showed that she had forgiven
him.

But the one thing that specially distinguished Juno from all the other
cats that I ever knew, was her big-hearted motherhood. If Juno had been a
woman, how many desolate orphans she would have cared for! She would have
given them summer outings, no doubt, and would have filled their
stockings brimful at Christmas time.

Not being a woman, Juno did her best, nevertheless, to make the world a
little easier for all the orphans she knew. What a heart must have beaten
under that gray fur! Ned and I often talked of it, and were filled with
regret that Juno could not understand our language so that we could talk
to her and get her views on the subject.

There was the time when she adopted the chicken, for instance. We knew
Juno so well that we felt perfectly certain how she looked at those
things, and so when the old yellow hen declined to acknowledge the little
black chicken as hers, and pecked its head whenever it went near her, we
took the helpless and disowned orphan and put it in Juno's bed, between
the two kittens.

"There, Juno," said Ned, by way of explanation to her look of
astonishment, "there's a child that's been deserted by its unfeeling
mother; I wish you'd look after it."

And Juno took the chicken and held it with one paw while she licked it all
over, though I am not sure that she liked the taste of the soft down that
covered the little stranger. She kept the chicken all that night and every
night afterwards until it considered itself big enough to go alone.

How we used to laugh to see Juno walking about the yard with her
foster-child chirping after her, or to see the chicken run to her and
insist