Page:The brown fairy book.djvu/295

 shelves, lest the kitten should have got behind them, drawers were pulled out, for perhaps the kitten might have got shut in. But it was all no use. The kitten had plainly run away, and nobody could tell if it would ever choose to come back.

Years passed away, and one day, when the princess was playing ball in the garden, she happened to throw her ball farther than usual, and it fell into a clump of rose-bushes. The princess of course ran after it at once, and she was stooping down to feel if it was hidden in the long grass, when she heard a voice calling her: ‘Ingibjörg! Ingibjörg!’ it said, ‘have you forgotten me? I am Kisa, your sister!’

‘But I never had a sister,’ answered Ingibjörg, very much puzzled; for she knew nothing of what had taken place so long ago.

‘Don’t you remember how I always slept in your cot beside you, and how you cried till I came? But girls have no memories at all! Why, I could find my way straight up to that cot this moment, if I was once inside the palace.’

‘Why did you go away then?’ asked the princess. But before Kisa could answer, Ingibjörg’s attendants arrived breathless on the scene, and were so horrified at the sight of a strange cat, that Kisa plunged into the bushes and went back to the forest.

The princess was very much vexed with her ladies-in-waiting for frightening away her old playfellow, and told the queen who came to her room every evening to bid her good-night.

‘Yes, it is quite true what Kisa said,’ answered the queen; ‘I should have liked to see her again. Perhaps, some day, she will return, and then you must bring her to me.’

Next morning it was very hot, and the princess declared that she must go and play in the forest, where it was always cool, under the big shady trees. As usual,