Of course, her parents were vastly
annoyed, for their maturer natures saw that this youthful scepticism
portended serious, if not fatal, consequences. Yet all in vain did the
sagacious couple reason and plead with their headstrong and heretical
child.
"For a long time Squeaknibble would not believe that there was any
such archfiend as a cat; but she came to be convinced to the contrary
one memorable night, on which occasion she lost two inches of her
beautiful tail, and received so terrible a fright that for fully an
hour afterward her little heart beat so violently as to lift her off
her feet and bump her head against the top of our domestic hole. The
cat that deprived my sister of so large a percentage of her vertebral
colophon was the same brindled ogress that nowadays steals ever and
anon into this room, crouches treacherously behind the sofa, and
feigns to be asleep, hoping, forsooth, that some of us, heedless of
her hated presence, will venture within reach of her diabolical claws.
So enraged was this ferocious monster at the escape of my sister that
she ground her fangs viciously together, and vowed to take no pleasure
in life until she held in her devouring jaws the innocent little mouse
which belonged to the mangled bit of tail she even then clutched in
her remorseless claws."
"Yes," said the old clock, "now that you recall the incident, I
recollect it well. I was here then, in this very corner, and I
remember that I laughed at the cat and chided her for her awkwardness.
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