"I should like to have Hero for my dog," said Frank, "and live with
him in a place where there were no sheep; and then, after many
years, he might forget his bad tricks."

"I must say something in favor of the much-abused cat. Doubtless she
would be a much better member of society, if she were better
treated, if she had a better example set before her.

Sportsmen are very angry because she catches birds, and because she
is sly. They will themselves lie down in the grass so that the birds
may not see them, and be as sly as the very slyest old puss, and yet
they cannot forgive her for watching noiselessly for birds. Has not
she as good a right as any sportsman to a little game? She takes
only what she wants to eat. She does not kill them in order to boast
to another cat of how many she has bagged.

They say she must be bad, for she kills singing birds. Do not
sportsmen kill larks and thrushes? Were you once to see a lark
rising up into the blue sky higher and higher, and hear him singing
as he rises louder and louder, as if he saw heaven opening, and
wanted to tell you how beautiful it was, and call you up there; and
then to think of killing and eating him, you would say, What cat can
be so unfeeling as a man? Who, with any music in his soul, could do
so? Yet men do eat larks for dinner, and then scold at the poor cat
who treats herself with only one perhaps. Why should she not be a
little dainty? Men, women, and hoys and girls are often cruel and
unreasonable, not merely cats. The cat is as good as she knows how
to be."

"So you are, pussy," said Harry, taking up his pet cat in his lap,