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But it was not till he was comfortably established in an arm-chair by the drawing-room fire, round which the rest of the family were also seated, that the charm began to work.

“How devoted Toots is to you!” purred the ladies, after an ineffectual effort on my part to share the arm-chair.

“You’re a very foolish Toots,” said the gentleman. (I was back on his shoulder by this time.)

“Toots, you’ve deserted me,” said my young mistress. “I’m quite jealous,” she added.

“Toots, you brute!” cried the gentleman, seizing me in both hands. “Where’s your good taste, and your gratitude? Go to your mistress, sir,” and he threw me into her lap. But I sprang back to his shoulder with one leap.

“It’s really most extraordinary,” said one lady.

“And Toots never goes to strangers as a rule,” added my mistress.

Everybody is proud of being exceptionally favoured. It was this last stroke, I am convinced, that rubbed him the right way. A gratified blandness pervaded his countenance. He made no further attempts to dislodge me, and I settled myself into the angles of his shoulder and affected to go to sleep.

“What are you going to do with him?” he asked, crossing one long leg over the other with a convulsive abruptness very trying to my balance, and to the strength of the arm-chair.

Both the ladies began to mew. They were so sorry to leave me behind, but it was quite impossible to take me. They couldn’t bear to think of my being unhappy, and didn’t know where in the world to find me a home.

“I wish you would take him!” said my mistress.

I listened breathlessly for the gentleman’s reply.

“Pets are not in the least in my line,” he said. “I am a bachelor, you know, of very tidy habits. I dislike trouble, and have a rooted objection to encumbrances.”

“We hear you have a pet mouse, though,” said my mistress. He laughed awkwardly.

“My dear young lady, I never said that my practice always squared with my principles. Helpless and troublesome creatures have sometimes an insinuating way with them, which forms an additional reason for avoiding them, especially if one is weak-minded. And—-“

“And you have a pet mouse?”

He sat suddenly upright with another jerk, which nearly shot me into the fire-place, and said,

“I’ll tell you about it, for upon my word I wish you could see the little beggar. It was one afternoon when I came in from riding, that I found a mouse sitting on the fender. I could only see his back, with the tail twitching, and I noticed that a piece had been bitten out of his left ear. The little wretch must have heard me quite well, but he sat on as if the place belonged to him.

“‘You’re pretty cool!’ I said; and being rather the reverse myself, I threw the Queen’s Regulations at him, and he disappeared. But it bothered me, for I hate mice in one’s quarters. You never know what mischief they mayn’t be doing. You put valuable papers carefully away, and the next time you go to the cupboard, they are reduced to shreds. The little brutes take the lining of your slippers to line their nests. They keep you awake at night–in short, they’re detestable. But I am not fond of killing things myself, though I’ve a sort of a conscience about knowing how it’s done. I don’t like leaving necessary executions to servants. As to mice, you know–poisoning is out of the question, on sanitary grounds. ‘Catch-’em-alive’ traps are like a policeman who catches a pickpocket–all the trouble of the prosecution is to come; and as to the traps with springs and spikes–my man set one in my bedroom once, and in the middle of the night the mouse was caught. For nearly an hour I doubt if I was much the happier of the two. Every moment I thought the poor wretch would stop screaming, for I had ordered the trap in the belief that death was instantaneous. At last I jumped up, and put the whole concern into my tub and held it under water. The poor beast was dead in six seconds. A catch-’em-alive trap and a tub of water is the most merciful death, I fancy; but I am rather in favour of letting one animal kill another. It seems more natural, and fairer. They have a run for their lives, so to speak.”