"Come, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!" she coaxed. "Do be a good little
cat, and come down. See, the dog can't get at you, now. He's
being held. Come!"

The allurement of his mistress's voice produced no stirring
effect on the temperamental Simon Cameron. Beyond leaving the
crotch and edging mincingly downward, a yard or so, the
Persian refused to obey the crooning summons. Plastered flat
against the tree trunk, some nine feet above the ground, he
miaued dolefully.

"Hold Bobby's collar," suggested Brice, "and I think I can get
the prematurely grizzled catling to earth."

The girl came over to where man and dog stood, and took Bobby
Burns by the collar. Brice crossed to the tree and looked
upward at the yowling Simon Cameron.

"Hello, you good little cat!" he hailed, cooingly. "Cats
always like to be called 'good,' you know. All of us are
flattered when we're praised for something we aren't. A dog
doesn't care much about being called 'good.' Because he knows
he is. But a cat..."

As he talked, Gavin scratched gratingly on the tree trunk, and
gazed up in ostentatious admiration at the coy Simon Cameron.
The Persian, like all his kind, was foolishly open to
admiration. Brice's look, his crooning voice, his
entertaining fashion of scratching the tree for the cat's
amusement all these proved a genuine lure. Down the tree