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sick at my
stomach.”
    “You’ll just have to be
sick,” the bird
    replied. “Anything is better
than death.”
    “Yes, that’s true,” Stuart
agreed.
    “Hang on, then! We may as
well get
    started.”
    Stuart tucked his skates
into his shirt, stepped gingerly onto a tuft of lettuce, and took a firm grip
on Margalo’s ankles. “All ready!” he cried.
    With a flutter of wings,
Margalo rose into the sky, carrying Stuart along, and together they flew out over
the ocean and headed toward home.
    “Pew!” said Margalo, when
they were high in the air, “you smell awful, Stuart.”
    “I know I do,” he replied,
gloomily.
    “I hope it isn’t making you
feel bad.”
    “I can hardly breathe,” she
answered. “And my heart is pounding in my breast. Isn’t there something you
could drop to make yourself lighter?”
    “Well, I could drop these
ice skates,” said Stuart.
    “Goodness me,” the little
bird cried, “I didn’t know you had skates hidden in your shirt. Toss those
heavy skates away quickly or we will both come down in the ocean and perish.”
Stuart threw his skates away and watched them fall down, down, till they
disappeared in the gray waves below. “That’s better,” said Margalo. “Now we’re
all right. I can already see the towers and chimneys of New York.”
    Fifteen minutes later, in
they flew through the open window of the Littles’ living room and landed on the
Boston fern. Mrs. Little, who had left the window up when she missed Margalo,
was glad to see them back, for she was beginning to worry. When she heard what
had happened and how near she had come to losing her son, she took Stuart in
her hand, even though his clothes smelled nasty, and kissed him. Then she sent
him upstairs to take a bath, and sent George out to take Stuart’s clothes to
the cleaner.
    “What was it like, out there
in the Atlantic Ocean?” inquired Mr. Little, who had never been very far from
home.
    So Stuart and Margalo told
all about the ocean, and the gray waves curling with white crests, and the
gulls in the sky, and the channel buoys and the ships and the tugs and the wind
making a sound in your ears. Mr. Little sighed and said some day he hoped to
get away from business long enough to see all those fine things.
    Everyone thanked Margalo for
saving Stuart’s life; and at suppertime Mrs. Little presented her with a tiny
cake, which had seeds sprinkled on top.
    X. Springtime
    Snowbell, the cat, enjoyed
nighttime more than daytime. Perhaps it was because his eyes liked the dark.But
I think it was because there are always so many worth-while things going on in New
York at night.
    Snowbell had several friends
in the neighborhood. Some of them were house cats, others were store cats. He
knew a Maltese cat in the AandPeople, a white Persian in the apartment house
next door, a tortoise-shell in the delicatessen, a tiger cat in the basement of
the branch library, and a beautiful young Angora who had escaped from a cage in
a pet shop on Third Avenue and had gone to live a free life of her own in the
tool house of the small park near Stuart’s home.
    One fine spring evening
Snowbell had been calling on the Angora in the park. He started home, late, and
it was such a lovely night she said she would walk along with him to keep him company.
When they got to Mr. Little’s house, the two cats sat down at the foot of a tall
vine which ran up the side of the house past George’s bedroom. This vine was
useful to Snowbell, because he could climb it at night and crawl into the house
through George’s open window. Snowbell began telling his friend about Margalo
and Stuart.
    “Goodness,” said the Angora
cat, “you mean to say you live in the same house with a bird and a mouse and
don’t do anything about it?”
    “That’s the situation,”
replied Snowbell. “But what can I do about it? Please remember that Stuart is
a member of the family, and the bird is a permanent guest, like myself.”
    “Well,” said