CALICO AND THE KITTENS 143 



dropping chestnuts or cookies by the way. She 

 in turn would hurry to meet them with a little 

 purr of greeting full of joy and affection. They 

 were shamefully big for such doings. The kittens 

 had quit it long ago. Calico herself, after a while, 

 came to feel the impropriety of nursing these two 

 strapping young things, and in a weak, indulgent 

 way tried to stop it. But the squirrels were per- 

 sistent and would not go about their business at 

 all with an ordinary cuff. She would put them 

 off, run away from them, slap them, and make be- 

 lieve to bite ; but not until she did bite, and sharply 

 too, would they be off. ' 



All this seemed very strange and unnatural ; yet 

 a stranger thing happened one day, when Calico 

 brought in to her family a full-grown gray squirrel 

 which she had caught in the woods. She laid it 

 down on the floor and called the kittens and squir- 

 rels to gather around. They came, and as the 

 young squirrels sniffed at the dead one on the 

 floor there was hardly a mark of difference in 

 their appearance. It might have been one of Cali- 

 co 's own nurslings that lay there dead, so far as 

 any one save Calico could see. And with her the 

 difference, I think, was more of smell than of 

 sight. But she knew her own; and though she 



