THE LIFE AND DEATH OF LUCY 109 
lined with dead leaves, under an overhanging 
rock and facing to the southward, she decided to 
establish her home, and there Lucy and three 
brothers and sisters were ultimately born. 
There was no great family resemblance be- 
tween them. Lucy was a decided brunette, very 
dark, which is the accepted type of beauty among 
wildeats, while her two sisters were gray and 
dirty brown, and her brother was more or less 
mottled, half-way between. Had you come upon 
them playing in front of their “ door,” however, 
on a warm spring day, while mother lay on her 
side, paws lazily outstretched, purring content- 
edly (but with one ear up and both eyes watch- 
ful), you would have said it was a pretty picture 
they made, and you might have called, “ Come, 
kitty, kitty ”—and then beat it, as mother coiled 
with a spitting snarl, and leaped off the rock! 
But, like Wordsworth’s Lucy, few knew, and 
few could know, how this Lucy grew, beside ways 
even less trodden than those “ beside the springs 
of Dove.” In fact, none knew. Only twice that 
summer did any human being come up past the 
den, and on both occasions Lucy’s mother heard 
