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Book, page 41 / 263 called Woorara, which in time shortened into Woory. I wish I could wind up Woory's history by assuring you that she was the most attached and grateful of cats, but truth forbids. A few weeks after her arrival at Hampstead she marched off and never was heard of more. It is supposed that she took to evil courses: tasted the blood and bones of her neighbours' chickens, and fell at last a sacrifice to the vengeance of a cook-maid. After this cat's departure Agnes took to heart a kitten, who was very fond of her. This kitten, the first night she slept in her room, on wakening in the morning looked up from the hearth at Agnes, who was lying awake, but with her eyes half-shut, and marked all puss's motions; after looking some instants, puss jumped up on the bed, crept softly forward and put her paw, with its glove on, upon one of Miss Baillie's eyelids and pushed it gently up; Miss Baillie looked at her fixedly, and puss, as if satisfied that her eyes were _there_ and safe, went back to her station on the hearth and never troubled herself more about the matter. To finish this chapter of cats. I saw yesterday at a lady's house at Hampstead, a real Persian cat, brought over by a Navy Captain, her brother. It has long hair like a dog, and a tail like a terrier's, only with longer hair. It is the most gentle, depressed-looking creature I ever saw; it seems to have the _mal du pays_, and moreover, had the cholic the morning I saw it, and Agnes Baillie had a spoonful of castor oil poured out for it, but it ran away. Joanna quoted to me the other day an excellent proverb applied to health: "Let well alone." If the Italian valetudinarian had done this his epitaph would not have arrived at the _sto qui_. Captain Beaufort tells me that they have found out that the wool under the buffalo's long hair is finer than the material of which the Cashmere shawls are made, and they are going to manufacture shawls of buffalo's wool, which are to shame and silence the looms of Cashmere. Would my mother choose to wait for one of these? _To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.
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