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 CHAPTER IX

BACK TO THE BLACK CAT

About three o'clock in the afternoon, the van, containing Fifi and her wardrobe, drew up before the tall old house in the street of the Black Cat where she had lived ever since she was a little, black-eyed child, who still cried for her mother, and who would not be comforted except upon Cartouche's knee. How familiar, how actual, how delightfully redolent of home was the narrow little street! Fifi saw it in her mind's eye long before she reached it, and in her gladness of heart sang snatches of songs like the one Toto thought was made for him, Le petit mousse noir. As the van clattered into the street, Fifi, sitting on her boxes, craned her neck out to watch a certain garret window, and from thence she heard two short, rapturous barks. It was Toto. Fifi, jumping down, opened the house door, and ran headlong up the dark, narrow well-known stair. Half way up, she met Toto, jumping down the steps two at a time.