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.
