I steal?—­and, worse still, I knock down anything, who have walked among three dozen wine-glasses, on a shelf in the butler’s pantry, without making them jingle!  But I must be calm, for there is more to tell.

The mouse never returned.  It was something, but it was not enough.  My pride had been deeply hurt, and it demanded revenge.  At last I felt it almost a grievance that I did reign supreme in the Captain’s quarters, that the mouse did not come back—­and let me catch him.

Besides our in-door man, my master had an Irish groom, and the groom had a place (something between a saddle-room and a scullery) where he said he “kept what the master required,” but where, the master said, Terence kept what was not wanted, and lost what was.

There certainly were, to my knowledge, fifteen empty Day and Martin’s blacking-bottles in one corner, for I used occasionally to walk over them to keep my feet in practice, and it was in this room that Terence last had conscious possession of the hunting-breeches which were never seen after the Captain’s birthday, when Terence threw the clothes-brush after me, because I would not drink the master’s health in whisky, and had to take the cleanest of the shoe brushes to his own coat, which was dusty from lying in the corn-chest.

But he was a good-natured creature, and now and then, for a change, I followed him into the saddle-room.  I am thankful to say I have never caught mice except for amusement, and a cat of daintier tastes does not exist.  But one has inherited instincts—­and the musty, fusty, mousey smell of the room did excite me a little.  Besides, I practised my steps among the blacking-bottles.

I was on the top of the most tottering part of the pile one afternoon, when I saw a pair of bead-like eyes, and—­yes, I could swear to it—­a torn ear.  But before I could spring to the ground they had vanished behind the corn-chest.

This was how it came about that when the Captain’s room was cosiest, and he and his friends were kindest, I used to steal away from luxuries which are dear to every fibre of my constitution, and pat hastily down to the dirty hole, where Terence accumulated old rubbish and misused and mislaid valuables—­in the wild hope that I might hear, smell, or see the ragged-eared enemy of my peace.

What hours I have wasted, now blinking with sleep, now on the alert at sounds like the revelries of mocking mice.

When I say that I have even risked wet feet, on a damp afternoon, to get there—­every cat will understand how wild must have been the infatuation!

I tried to reason myself out of it.  “Toots,” I would say, “you banished him from your master’s room, and you have probably banished him from Terence’s.  Why pursue the matter farther?  So pitiful an object is unworthy of your revenge.”

“Very true,” I would reply to myself, “but I want a turn in the air.  I’ll just step down as far as the saddle-room once more, and make myself finally comfortable by looking behind the old barrel.  I don’t think I went quite round it.”