Pipkin and Paragon have gone to their long home after no less than 17 years of honourable and honoured existence. Those are not, by the way, their real names, but anonymity is to be observed out of respect for the feelings of their bereaved friends, For others, it must be explained that Pipkin and Paragon were two cats, as venerable, we suppose, as any that ever lived in Shanghai. But the really remarkable thing about them was the private arrangement, made entirely between themselves, by which they lived all through their long lives. When they first entered their late home, they were made free of the whole house. There was no suggestion by their master and mistress that one was for kitchen, the other for parlour. The cats decided that for themselves. Paragon took up a permanent place on the drawing room hearthrug; Pipkin settled down in the kitchen. And somehow it became an understood thing that Pipkin was to wait on Paragon. Every morning for 17 years the kitchen cat marched into the drawing or dining-room to attend to his superior's toilet, combed out any knots in his fur, bathed him thoroughly and, leaving him glossy and neat for the day's social duties, withdrew below stairs. Towards the end, when both cats had become rather stiff and shaky, the valeting took Pipkin a long time. Sometimes he and Paragon almost fell asleep over it, But Pipkin never flagged, we believe, in his duty: and even on the last day when the two of them passed side by side into the paradise that awaits all good cats, Paragon made his entry there as spick and span as ever he had been made to receive his mistress's guests.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.