'It's tolerably clear to me,' said Bounderby, 'that the little puss can get small good out of such companionship.'

"Why, Puss ! I nearly tripped over you," she cried, the laughter sparkling through her lashes.

I pass on the stairs domestics calling ' Puss , puss !' The butler is chirruping loudly and poking beneath the furniture with a umbrella.

Perceiving that Grandfather's chair was empty, and having often before experienced its comforts, puss laid herself quietly down upon the cushion.

Puss here,' indicating his daughter, 'shall go to bed; and you and I will keep it up till all's blue.'

Are you acquainted with the mood of mind in which, if you were seated alone, and the cat licking its kitten on the rug before you, you would watch the operation so intently that puss 's neglect of one ear would put you seriously out of temper?'

Puss appeared to endorse the sentiment by a loud purr and a graceful wave of her tail, and Polly returned to the subject from which these little vanities had beguiled her.

`Cheshire Puss ,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider.

The little puss seems already to have airs enough to make a husband as miserable as it's a law of nature for a quiet man to be when he marries a beauty.

Some men are born to good luck: all they do or try to do comes right-- all that falls to them is so much gain--all their geese are swans--all their cards are trumps--toss them which way you will, they will always, like poor puss , alight upon their legs, and only move on so much the faster.

Yet it was a sight that might well arrest wandering thoughts: Eppie, with the rippling radiance of her hair and the whiteness of her rounded chin and throat set off by the dark-blue cotton gown, laughing merrily as the kitten held on with her four claws to one shoulder, like a design for a jug-handle, while Snap on the right hand and Puss on the other put up their paws towards a morsel which she held out of the reach of both--Snap occasionally desisting in order to remonstrate with the cat by a cogent worrying growl on the greediness and futility of her conduct; till Eppie relented, caressed them both, and divided the morsel between them.