The Cat in Grandfather's House

It is peculiarly fitting in this day of delightful juveniles that an author of many books on the technique of writing should turn his pen to the writing of this child's book.

_Carl Grabo, with whose name "The Art of the Short Story" is at once associated, has written this whimsical and imaginative tale of Hortense and the Cat. Antique furniture, literally stuffed with personality, hurries about in the dim moonlight in order to help Hortense through a thrillingly strange campaign against a sinister Cat and a villainous Grater. The book offers rare humor, irresistible alike to grown-ups and children._

_It is a book that will stimulate the imagination of the most prosaic child--or at least give it exercise! Wonder, the most fertile awakener of intelligence, and vision are closely akin to imagination, and both are greatly needed in this work-a-day world._

Each reader, a child at heart be he seven or seventy, will bubble with the glee of childhood at all its quaint imaginings. They are so real that they seem to be true.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

I. "... going to the big house to live" 9

II. "And the darker the room grew, the more it seemed alive" 20

III. "They could hear the soft pat-pat of padded feet in the hall" 31

IV. "Highboy, and Lowboy, and Owl, and the Firedogs come out at night" 48

V. "Jeremiah's disappeared again" 60

VI. "I'll have the charm That saves from harm" 74

VII. "... there should be Little People up the mountain yonder" 93

VIII. "The sky was lemon colored, and the trees were dark red" 109

IX. "Tell us a story about a hoodoo, Uncle Jonah" 128

X. "Ride, ride, ride For the world is fair and wide" 134

XI. "... take us to the rock on the mountain side where the Little People dance" 145

XII. "There are queer doings in this house" 169

XIII. "This is what was inside" 186

CHAPTER I

"... going to the big house to live."

Hortense's father put the letter back into its envelope and handed it across the table to her mother.

"I hadn't expected anything of the kind," he said, "but it makes the plan possible provided----"

Hortense knew very well what Papa and Mamma were talking about, for she was ten years old and as smart as most girls and boys of that age. But she went on eating her breakfast and pretending not to hear. Papa and Mamma were going a long way off to Australia, provided Grandmother and Grandfather would care for Hortense in their absence. So Mamma had written, and this was the answer.

"Would you like to stay with Grandfather and Grandmother while Papa and Mamma are away?" her mother asked.

Hortense would like it very much, for she had never been in her grandfather's house. Grandfather and Grandmother had always visited her at Christmas and other times, and she had imagined wonderful stories of the house that she had never seen. All her father would tell of it when she asked him was that it was large and old-fashioned. Once only she had heard him say to her mother, "It would be a strange house for a child."

Strange houses were her delight. In a strange house anything might happen. Always in fairy tales and wonder stories, the houses were deliriously strange.

So when her mother asked her the question, Hortense answered promptly, "Yes, ma'm."

"I'm afraid you'll have no one to play with," Mamma said, "but there will be nice books to read and a large yard to enjoy. Besides, the house itself is very unusual. If you were an imaginative child it might be a little--but then you aren't imaginative."

"Yes, ma'm," said Hortense.