Then she stopped suddenly.
She had seen him lying thus a hundred times before. On the pillow near
him an indistinguishable mass of golden fur--the helpless bulk of a
squirrel chained to the leg of his cot; at his feet a wall-eyed cat, who
had followed his tyrannous caprices with the long-suffering devotion
of her sex; on the shelf above him a loathsome collection of flies
and tarantulas in dull green bottles: a slab of ginger-bread for light
nocturnal refection, and her own pot of bear's grease. Perhaps it was
the piteous defencelessness of youthful sleep, perhaps it was some
lingering memory of her father's caress; but as she gazed at him with
troubled eyes, the juvenile reprobate slipped back into the baby-boy
that she had carried in her own childish arms such a short time ago,
when the maternal responsibility had descended with the dead mother's
ill-fitting dresses upon her lank girlish figure and scant virgin
breast--and her hand fell listlessly at her side.
The sleeper stirred slightly and awoke. At the same moment, by some
mysterious sympathy, a pair of beady bright eyes appeared in the bulk
of fur near his curls, the cat stretched herself, and even a vague
agitation was heard in the bottles on the shelf.
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