hed it up with her paw and looked at it with her head on one side.

For several dreadful minutes we were afraid that Juno was going to leave
an orphan on our hands; but we did not know her, after all. In a few
moments she reached the conclusion that the fox was probably a cat of some
new and interesting kind, and she lay down again, purring softly, and took
the little stranger to her heart.

Such a pair as those two did make! We named the fox Flash, and he was the
pride and the delight of the family. In a few days after his adoption Juno
came to look on him as quite the most beautiful creature she had ever
seen, and she showed a decided partiality for him. When she moved her
family from the stable to mother's room, which she did systematically
every morning, she always carried Flash in first and laid him on the rug
with an air of pride impossible to describe.

"No, no, Juno," mother would say, "he is very pretty, but I can't have him
here."

But Juno would run back after the kitten, and, having toiled upstairs with
it, would lay it on the rug also and lie down beside it, as though she
would say:

"I'd like to see you move me now!"

Within a month Flash could run everywhere, and he was the brightest, the
sharpest, the merriest little fellow that ever kept a respectable cat in
trouble with his escapades. That sharp nose of his was everywhere at once,
it seemed to me, and those bright eyes were peering into every corner in
search of mischief. He trotted about the house with a swaggering
impudence, and went to bed in one of the Colonel's shoes if he liked, or
played hide and seek in father's hat when he found it convenient.

[Illustration]

As for the life he led poor Juno, we often wondered why she did not turn
grayer than ever, having to deal with this graceless young reprobate. If
he found her trying to sleep a little, he would bite her ears and pull at
her tail, bracing himself back on all four of his absurd little feet, and
sometimes tumbling over in his excitement; and he rolled over her and
growled and worried her until she must have been almost on the verge of
insomnia! Yet she never boxed his ears once, much as he deserved it.

As the kitten grew older and able to take part in the play, what romps the
three used to have! How many times I have seen them rushing through the
house in wild pursuit of one another, making as much noise as a drove of
horses, mother said, with the fox in the lead, and the cats cha