"O Buff," she said, "if you had only been willing to learn when you were
little, you might have been as clever as your sister, instead of
being the great anxiety you are to me."
"And why am I an anxiety?" I said, ruffling up my fur and my tail, for I
was very angry.
"Because you are useless," she said, "and not particularly handsome; and
when a cat is useless and not particularly handsome, they sometimes----"
"What?" I said, turning pale to the ends of my ears.
"They sometimes drown it, Buff," she said in a whisper, and turned away
to hide her feelings.
Judge of my own next day when they came into the kitchen and took me up
and put me into a basket. I knew all about drowning. These tales of
horror are told at twilight time in all cat nurseries, and I knew that
if three large stones were put into the basket with me, I might
consider my fate sealed.
It was very uncomfortable in the basket. They carried me upside-down
part of the way, and it was draughty and hard; but, so far, there were
no stones. When they took off the lid of the basket, I found myself
under the shade of a huge moving mountain, that seemed about to fall and
crush me. It was an elephant.
I found that the people where my mother lived had given me to the cook,
who had given me to her cousin, who was engaged to be married to a young
man whose brother-in-law was the elephant's keeper, and so I found
myself in the elephant's house.
There was no milk for me--no heads and tails of fish--no scraps of
meat--no delicious unforeseen morsels of butter.
The elephant was very kind to me. He had once had a friend exactly like
me, he explained, but had unfortunately walked upon him, and now I had
come to fill the vacant place in his large heart.
I resolved at once that he should not walk upon me; but in order to
insure this, I was compelled to enter upon a more active existence than
I had ever known.