"'Tom,' said Furry-Purry, 'I never shall play again. I am very unhappy.
I have seen Mrs. Tabitha Velvetpaw lying on a silk cushion, while I make
my bed in the hay. She walks on a lovely soft carpet, and I have only
this barn floor. O Tom, I want to be a house-cat.'

"'A house-cat!' repeated Tom disdainfully. 'They sleep all day. They
get their tails pulled and their ears pinched by horrid monsters with
only two legs to walk on, and nights--beautiful moonlight nights when we
barn-cats are roaming the alleys and singing on the roofs and having a
good time generally--they are locked in cellars and garrets and made to
watch rat-holes. Oh, no! not for Tom.'

"He was off with a whisk of his tail to the highest beam in the barn,
looking down on them with the greenest of green eyes, and singing,--

'Some love the home
Of a lazy drone,
And a bed on a cushioned knee;
But in wild free ways
I will spend my days,
And at night on the roofs I'll be.

Oh, 'tis my delight,
On a moonlight night'--

"'Don't listen to him, my dear,' said Mrs. Barebones, the consumptive
cat; 'he's a wild, thoughtless creature, quite inexperienced in the ways
of the world. Heed the counsels of one whose sands of life are almost
run and who, before she goes to the land of cats, would fain warn a