city, all were gone! There was a
charming log-fire on the hearth, sparkling and crackling; whirr,
whirr, whirr, went the old woman's wheel, and there she sate in her
chair just as usual; and the wind was blowing, and the rain was
pelting against the shutters, exactly as it did the very night puss
had left the cottage in such a mysterious way. In fact, everything
looked _precisely_ the same. The cat rubbed her eyes, but nothing
could she see of the Fairy, or the car, or the silver pheasants.

However, had she got back, and so quick too? And the old woman did not
seem at all surprised to see her--it was very odd. She could not make
it out anyhow: at last it struck her that, perhaps, she might have
been dreaming, and never have been out of the hut at all. Yet those
terrible growls of Viper's, and those dismal days and nights in the
trees--no, they _must_ have been real! Still, it was very strange that
the old woman should take no more notice of her, if she had been
lost--how could it be? It was really unaccountable.

But her perplexities were interrupted by the cheerful voice of her old
mistress calling out, 'Come, my pussy! it is supper-time!' and as she
spoke, she rose up from her spinning-wheel, and taking down some eggs
and a cake of brown bread, with a large jug, from her corner cupboard,
she broke the eggs into the frying-pan, and they were soon hissing and
sputtering over the fire. Then she placed a large saucer on the table,
and broke some bread into it; and returning to the fire, she took off
the frying-pan, and emptied the eggs into a dish on the table, and sat
down to her supper. But before she tasted a bit herself, she poured
some nice goat's milk over the bread in a saucer, and set it down on
the hearth before the cat.

Now I will venture to say, puss never ate a meal in her life half so
thankfully before. She made a resolution, between every mouthful,
never to say one word to that silly chattering magpie again; and never
to indulge in any more foolish wishes, but to stay at home, do her
duty in catching her mistress's mice, and be contented, and thankful
for the brown bread and milk, without troubling her head about
countesses and buttered crumpets any more.

And I am happy to be able to tell you that she faithfully kept her
resolution. She never spoke to the magpie afterwards; but contracted a
steady friendship with the owl, which lasted to the day of his death;
and when he did die, which was not till he