OUR PUSS. 61

For nearly the whole of the first week after our departure
Puss kept up a most pitiful wail. Indeed, it was described
as really painful to hear. During that time she never left
the immediate surroundings of the house, but would rush
from back to front, peering in at the windows, evidently still
in the hope that some of her friends were within, and would
give heed to her lament. We had formerly lived at the op-
posite side of the street, and one day it seemed suddenly to
enter Puss’s head that we might have gone back there, for
she crossed the road and deliberately looked in at all the
windows, at top and bottom of the house; but seeing nothing
of us, she returned to the back-green of her own home, and,
from that time, hope seemed to die within her. Hitherto
she had received daily from our neighbour a little food, some-
times at the window; but now she made a bed for herself
under a garden seat, which neither hunger nor cold would
tempt her to leave. Reader, you may believe it or not, but
my friend, who closely watched her movements, gave it, as
his honest opinion, that she had lain down to die; yes, to die
of a broken heart—a malady which but seldom has a fatal
result in the human family, and is considered an honour to
our nature when it does occur. What shall we say, then, to
this display of feline nature? Simply that the story is a
true one, and let the facts speak for themselves.

But Puss was not permitted to perish. Its evident and
wonderful devotion to the absent ones found for it a good
friend in our worthy neighbour, who, seeing it made no sign
of leaving its self-chosen place of shelter, although well-nigh
famished with hunger, climbed over the wall to where she
lay, and, placing a bowl of milk by her side, by dint of