Patricia sitting there in the dusk beside her open window. Her hands
were folded in her lap, and she was rocking gently back and forth in a
high-backed rocking-chair, with her eyes closed.

I thought it would be a good chance for me to take a peep into her
room, so I ventured to swing over and drop down on the window-sill
beside her, on all fours. I did it very quietly, so quietly, in fact,
that I do not see how she could possibly have been disturbed; yet I
give you my word, Ring-tail, that woman shrieked until you could have
heard her half a mile. I never was so terrified in all my life. It
paralysed me for an instant, and then I sprang up by the vines to the
lightning-rod, and streaked up it faster than any lightning ever came
down. Once in my room, I shook all the rest of the evening.

[Illustration]

Matches said that Miss Patricia was probably worse scared than I was,
but that's impossible. I never made a sound, and as for her--why, even
the cook came running when Miss Patricia began to shriek, and she was
in the coal-cellar at the time, and is deaf in one ear.

But Matches always disagreed with me in everything, and I was not
sorry when we parted company. I'd better tell you about that next. It
happened in this way. Stuart came into the room one day with Sim
Williams, one of the boys who was always swarming up the stairs to see
us. Sim was older than Stuart, and one of those restless, inquiring
boys, never satisfied with letting well enough alone. He was always
making experiments. This time he wanted to experiment on me with a
handful of tobacco,--coax me to eat it, you know, and see what effect
it would have. But Stuart objected. He was afraid it might make me