"Don't laugh, Mollie," said tenderhearted Nellie Dimock--"please don't
laugh. I think it was dreadful. O Miss Ruth, was the poor little thing
dead?"

"No, indeed, Nellie; and, wonderful to relate, she was very little hurt.
We supposed her fine thick coat kept the fire from reaching her body,
for we could discover no burns. Her tongue was blistered where she had
lapped the flame, and in her wild flight she had lamed one of her paws.
Of course her beauty was gone, and for a few weeks she was that
deplorable looking object--a singed cat. But oh, what tears of joy I
shed over her, and how I dosed her with catnip tea, and bathed her paw
with arnica, and nursed and petted her till she was quite well again! My
little brother Walter ("That was my papa, you know," Mollie whispered to
her neighbor), who was only three years old, would stand by me while I
was tending her, his chubby face twisted into a comical expression of
sympathy, and say in pitying tones: 'There! there! poo-ittle Dinah! I
know all about it. How oo must huffer' (suffer). The dear little fellow
had burned his finger not long before and remembered the smart.

"I am sorry to say that the invalid received his expressions of sympathy
in a very ungracious manner, spitting at him notwithstanding her sore
tongue, and showing her claws in a threatening way if he tried to touch
her. As fond as I was of Dinah, I was soon obliged to admit that she had
an unamiable disposition."

"Why, Miss Ruth, how funny!" said Ann Eliza Jones. "I didn't know there
was any difference in cats' dispositions."

"Indeed there is," Miss Ruth answered: "quite as much as in the