“I’m the Shepherd,” said he. “Now then! Up you come on my shoulders as though you were one of my sheep being rescued from a lion. There!” said he, as he swung him up so that he sat astride both shoulders. “Hold tight now, and I’ll show you that not even the biggest and fiercest lion could spring as far as I can, or could catch you as long as I am carrying you.” And with that he made a great, bounding leap and set off down the road toward Mrs. Valiant’s cottage, with small Doldrums high up aloft, chortling and beaming and drumming with both feet on the Shepherd’s chest and shouting at the top of his voice, “Faster! Faster! The nasty old lion’s coming. Oh my, what a jump! Do it again, please, Shepherd, do it again!”

Mrs. Valiant laughed heartily at the picture, but Mrs. Dismal and Gloomy looked as though they could hardly believe their eyes.

They all arrived at the gate of the cottage together because the Shepherd took a round-about way, so that by the time they got there and little Doldrums was lowered to the ground he was as cheerful as a cricket. As soon as they got inside the gate, along came the yellow cat, eager to meet her special friend, arching her back and rubbing against the Shepherd’s legs and purring loudly, asking as plainly as possible where he had been all this long time. Little Doldrums immediately put out both hands to seize her by the tail, as he did to any unwary animal that chanced to fall into his clutches.

“Not that end, Doldrums,” said the Shepherd cheerily. “Never the tail end. That always results in nasty scratches. But now try the head end—ever so gently, under the chin and behind the ears and on the top of the head, and see how loudly you can make her purr. Gently does it!—always. Ah—listen to that! She’s purring like a baby lion.”

And there was the infant, Doldrums, sitting happily in the sunny garden, while the bees hummed about the flowers and the ducklings waddled up the path towards him, with his small face positively beaming, wholly absorbed in experimenting to see whether the yellow-cat-mechanism produced the loudest purrs if tickled under the chin, or behind the ears, or scratched ever so carefully on the very top of the head, and looking, as Mrs. Dismal expressed it, as though he had never been a little Self-Pity in all his life.