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Just then the Boy (for he hadn’t gone away at all; he had just stooped out of sight) rushed in the door quickly, snatched one of the kittens out of the round ball, and ran away with it as fast as he could run. Pretty soon Mrs. Chinchilla came back, and of course she counted the kittens the very first thing. She always did it. To her surprise and fright she found only two instead of three. She knew she couldn’t be mistaken. There were five kittens in her last family, and two less in this family; and five kittens less two kittens is three kittens. One chinchilla catkin gone! What should she do?

She had once heard a lady say that there were too many cats in the world already, but she had no patience with people who made such wicked speeches. Her kittens had always been so beautiful that they sometimes sold for fifty cents apiece, and none of them had ever been drowned.

Mrs. Chinchilla knew in a second just where that kitten had gone. It makes a pussy-cat very quick and bright and wise to take care of and train large families of frisky kittens, with very little help from their father in bringing them up. She knew that that Boy had carried off the kitten, and she intended to have it back, and scratch the Boy with some long scratches, if she could only get the chance. Looking at her claws, she found them nice and sharp, and as the druggist opened the door for a customer Mrs. Chinchilla slipped out, with just one backward glance, as much as to say, “Gone out; will be back soon.” Then she dashed across the street, and waited on the steps of the Boy’s house. Very soon a man came with a bundle, and when the house- maid opened the door Mrs. Chinchilla walked in. She hadn’t any visiting-card with her; but then the Boy hadn’t left any card when he called for the kitten, so she didn’t care for that.

The housemaid didn’t see her when she slipped in. It was a very nice house to hold such a heartless boy, she thought. The parlor door was open, but she knew the kitten wouldn’t be there, so she ran upstairs. When she reached the upper hall she stood perfectly still, with her ears up and her whiskers trembling. Suddenly she heard a faint mew, then another, and then a laugh; that was the Boy. She pushed open a door that was ajar, and walked into the nursery. The Boy was seated in the middle of the floor, tying the kitten to a tin cart, and the poor little thing was mewing piteously. Mrs. Chinchilla dashed up to the Boy, scratched him as many long scratches as she had time for at that moment, took the frightened kitten in her kind, gentle mouth, the way all mother-cats do (because if they carried them in their forepaws they wouldn’t have enough left to walk on), and was downstairs and out on the front doorstep before the housemaid had finished paying the man for the bundle. And when she got that chinchilla catkin home in the safe, sunny bay-window, she washed it over and over and over so many times that it never forgot, so long as it lived, the day it was stolen by the Boy.

When the Boy’s mother hurried upstairs to see why he was crying so loud, she told him that he must expect to be scratched by mother-cats if he stole their kittens. “I shall take your pretty Fauntleroy collar off,” she said; “it doesn’t match your disposition.”

The Boy cried bitterly until luncheon time, but when he came to think over the matter, he knew that his mother was right, and Mrs. Chinchilla was right, too; so he treated all mother-cats and their kittens more kindly after that.