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“I don’t know yet,” Mr. Neatby said gravely; “it must stay here for to-night anyway.”

“It’s a pretty little thing, sir,” said the landlady, stooping down to look at it where it lay basking in the heat of the fire. “’Twould be company for you, wouldn’t it, sir?”

“Hadn’t it better go with you to the kitchen for to-night, Mrs. Vyner?” Mr. Neatby asked persuasively, and Mrs. Vyner, with many protestations of wonder, gathered up the kitten into her apron and departed to the lower regions, where she informed the niece who lived with her that their lodger “’adn’t spoken so many words to ’er never before, no, not in a month of Sundays.”

Mr. Neatby threw the box into his capacious waste-paper basket, but he put the card and label carefully away in one of the pigeon-holes of his desk.

Next day, on his return from morning school, he found a white cardboard hat-box, big enough to contain the most umbrageous matinée hat ever worn, set right in the middle of his table, and he felt distinctly annoyed. His landlady followed him into the sitting-room to lay lunch, and he, pointing to the offending box, said coldly: “I must ask you not to leave your parcels in my room, Mrs. Vyner.”