wet to be out-of-doors, and it
turned out that in the midst of their games to-day, they had caught
sight of her white coat in her dusky retreat. Though she would rather
not have been found, Madam took the discovery calmly, and made no
difficulty, even when Dennis softly put in his hand and drew out the
black kitten. She knew the children well, and was quite sure they would
do no harm, so she lay lazily blinking her green eyes, and even purred
gently with pleasure to hear her kitten admired.

It was such a very nice kitten. Not only because of its dense
blackness, but its coat was as glossy and thick as that of a little
mole, and its shape unusually stumpy and attractive.

"Isn't it a _beauty_?" said Dennis, in a delighted whisper; "we must
keep it."

"We haven't looked at the others yet," said Maisie cautiously; "don't
let's settle so soon."

The black kitten was accordingly given back to Madam, who at once licked
it all over from top to toe, and the others brought out one by one.
There was a perfectly white one, much smaller than the first, and the
other was a commonplace striped grey.

"I don't care about either," said Dennis; "they're just like lots and
lots of other kittens, and they grow up like lots and lots of other
cats. Now the black's uncommon."

"I can't bear settling which is to be drowned," sighed Maisie. "I
suppose we may really only keep one."

"You're a ninny," said Dennis shortly.

In reality he did not like to doom the kittens any better than his
sister, but he would have thought it womanly to show his feelings.

"I call it unfair," continued Maisie, stroking the white and grey
kittens with her little brown hand, "to drown them just because they're
not pretty. It's not as if they were bad."

"But you _know_ we mustn't keep them all," said Dennis impatiently; "so
what's the good of going on like that? We _must_ choose, and the
black's the best, isn't it?"

"Well, then," said Maisie reluctantly, "I think we ought to cast lots,
so as to give them each a chance."

This appealed to Dennis's sense of justice, and was besides the usual
way of settling differences between his sister and himself. He pulled
out three pieces of hay of different lengths, and holding them tightly
shut in his hand, with the ends sticking out in an even row, said
shortly, "You choose."

"Which is which?" asked Maisie, her face getting pink with excitement.

"The longest's the black, the middling's the white,