A FRIENDLY RAT 285 



her time running about and gathering little straws, 

 feathers, string, and anything of the kind she 

 could pick up, also stealing or begging for strips 

 of cotton, or bits of wool and thread from the 

 work-basket. Now it happened that her friend 

 was one of those cats with huge tufts of soft hair 

 on the two sides of her face ; a cat of that type, 

 which is not uncommon, has a quaint resemblance 

 to a Mid- Victorian gentleman with a pair of mag- 

 nificent side-whiskers of a silky softness covering 

 both cheeks and flowing down like a double beard. 

 The rat suddenly discovered that this hair was 

 just what she wanted to add a cushion-like lining 

 to her nest, so that her naked pink little ratlings 

 should be born into the softest of all possible 

 worlds. At once she started plucking out the 

 hairs, and the cat, taking it for a new kind of 

 game, but a little too rough to please her, tried 

 for a while to keep her head out of reach and to 

 throw the rat off. But she wouldn't be thrown 

 off, and as she persisted in flying back and jumping 

 at the cat's face and plucking the hairs, the cat 

 quite lost her temper and administered a blow with 

 her claws unsheathed. 



The rat fled to her refuge to lick her wounds, 

 and was no doubt as much astonished at the 

 sudden change in her friend's disposition as the 

 cat had been at the rat's new way of showing her 

 playfulness. The result was that when, after 

 attending to her scratches, she started upon her 

 task of gathering soft materials, she left the cat 



