The thrilling incident of the stray cat at "Chez Nous" is never likely to get into the newspapers. On the other hand, lots of incidents which do get in never deserve to. It's all a question of head-lining, which is the bluff by which the public is induced to read matter it would otherwise skip.

The affair began while I was in the City. I learnt afterwards that Marjorie (my wife) was crooning to her needles the unmetrical jumper lullaby, "Six purl, eight plain; then the same all over again." Anyhow she was knitting, when she suddenly found herself looking into the wistful eyes of a tortoiseshell cat which had appeared—merely appeared.

As she told me, she softly exclaimed, "A cat!" (right first time); then, because it looked so wistful, she directed the maid to set before the creature a saucer of milk. In fact—

When I arrived home, Marjorie ran into the hall to give me one of her smooth evening kisses. I stepped forward to exchange it for one of my stubbly ones when—

"Oh, Jack," said Marjorie, "you've trodden on her!"

"'Her,'" I said. "Who's 'her'?"

"The dearest little tortoiseshell stray cat," replied Marjorie. "You really might have been more careful."

"I say, that's rather unfair," I said. "I stagger home tired to the teeth after a particularly thin day in the City, followed by a sardine-tin journey, and my own wife turns on me in favour of the first outcast cat that comes along. It's enough to drive a man to dope." Or, as the headlines would have it:—

After a bath and a change I felt better, and came down to dinner humming a sentimental ballad in Marjorie's honour. But the word "love" died on my lips when I saw that in the lap of Marjorie's pretty pink gown reposed the stray cat. The colour-clash and the misapplication of caresses which should have been my monopoly threw me back with a jerk to a state of bearishness.

"Surely you're not going to keep that animal?" I asked.

"Of course I am, as long as she likes to stay," said Marjorie. "She's very fond of me, aren't you, pussy? Fonder than my husband, I 'spect."

"I know these stray cats," I said. "Stiff with microbes. Tribes of mangy lovers prowling round the house. A nest of kittens in my top-hat. I know."

"Poor li'l pussy," cooed Marjorie. "Don'tum listen to the big coarse man."

"Coarse be——"

In other (and more suitable) words—

Marjorie said coldly that she didn't know I had such a temper. I said hotly that I didn't know she could be so infantile.

We went on discovering things we hadn't known about each other:—

Dinner was an ordeal. I felt miles apart from Marjorie. A great gulf filled with black-and-yellow cat lay between us. Once only the topic of the beast arose (on the subject of fish-bones) and just as I was becoming big and coarse again the maid entered with the joint. She must have heard what I said.

Still, the meal itself was a cheering one, and, after Marjorie had risen, the sentimental ballad mood gained on me again. After all, what was a stray cat compared with one's marriage vows? If the dear girl wanted to keep the thing we would have it vetted, definitely named, and warned as to followers.

Marjorie's voice interrupted my amiable planning. "Puss, puss," she called. I joined her and stated my decision to relent.

"But she's vanished," said Marjorie. She had. And she has never come back. Ah! those stray cats.

"Look here, old girl," I said, "I take back all I said about your little friend. I'm with you that she was the dearest, most hygienic, most moral cat that ever strafed a mouse."

"Perhaps it's all for the best that she's gone," said Marjorie.

The dear girl inclined her head towards my shoulder. Well, well.

More Precocity

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"Unfurnished Rooms wanted (two or three), with attendance; one child, 4½ years; at business all day."

Provincial Paper.