"Most likely much the same as did old Mrs. Pussy Cat up on the next farm."

"How was that?" your Aunt Amy asked.

"Well, you see, she was partly black and partly white, and not being a very neat cat, the white hair got dirty so often that she believed it would be a great thing if it was all black. So she got the idea into her head that if she should shave off the white hair, it would be the color she wanted when it grew out again.

"Well, now what do you suppose that poor foolish thing did? Why she went to the barber's, and had him shave all the white hair off of her body. She actually frightened the ducks and the geese when she came home, she looked so queer; but you couldn't have made her believe it. She thought she was a perfect beauty, and when she came over to this farm that evening, Mr. Thomas Cat said to her:

"'Why you are a perfect sight, that's what you are, with those tufts of black hair all over you!'

"'That's all the style,' Mrs. Pussy Cat said, and I think she really believed that she was as handsome as any cat you could find.

"Well, things went along all right while the weather was warm, but in the course of ten days we had a heavy frost, and dear me, dear me, how cold it grew all of a sudden! Poor Mrs. Pussy Cat was almost frozen to death the first night of the cold snap, when she tried to stay with the rest of us to a concert, and went home moaning:

"'Oh, give me back my hair! Give me back my hair!'

Mrs. Pussy Cat in Style

"Of course that couldn't be done, because she had to wait for it to grow again; but Mrs. Man on the next farm wrapped her up in an old shawl, and she had to stay in a basket until her hair grew, else she'd have frozen to death, for we had a terrible hard winter that season. When the hair did come out it was uneven, of course, and she was the worst looking cat you ever saw.

"Mr. Man was shaving the first morning Mrs. Pussy Cat came out of the basket, and he hadn't seen her since she had been to the barber's.

Mr. Man is Disturbed

"She jumped up on a chair by the side of him, thinking he would stroke her fur as he always used to do, when the poor man got one glimpse of her, and it nearly scared him into hysterics. I suppose he thought it was a ghost, or something like that, for she looked bad enough to be almost anything.

"He gave a yell, and jumped in the air. That scared Mrs. Pussy Cat, and she screamed as she leaped out of the chair. Then Mr. Man went after her with that big razor in his hand.

"I don't know how far he chased her; but Mr. Towser said that Mrs. Pussy Cat ran more than five miles before she stopped, and when she sneaked back home that night, I'm thinking she felt a good deal as Mr. Crow did when he tried to make folks believe peacock feathers were growing in his tail."