it an unpleasant smell of the docks, but to Pussy it was welcome
tidings from home. She trotted down the long Street due east,
threading the rails of front gardens, stopping like a statue for
an instant, or crossing the street in search of the darkest side,
and came at length to the docks and to the water. But the place
was strange. She could go north or south. Something turned her
southward; and, dodging among docks and Dogs, carts and Cats,
crooked arms of the bay and straight board fences, she got, in an
hour or two, among familiar scenes and smells; and, before the
sun came up, she had crawled back -weary and foot-sore through
the same old hole in the same old fence and over a wall to her
junk-yard back of the bird-cellar--yes, back into the very
cracker-box where she was born.

Oh, if the Fifth Avenue family could only have seen her in her
native Orient!

After a long rest she came quietly down from the cracker-box
toward the steps leading to the cellar, engaged in her old-time
pursuit of seeking for eatables. The door opened, and there stood
the negro. He shouted to the bird-man inside:

"Say, boss, come hyar. Ef dere ain't dat dar Royal Ankalostan am
comed back!"

Jap came in time to see the Cat jumping the wall. They called
loudly and in the most seductive, wheedling tones: "Pussy, Pussy,
poor Pussy! Come, Pussy!" But Pussy was not prepossessed in their
favor, and disappeared to forage in her old-time haunts.