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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76985 ***





SALLY IN HER FUR COAT




[Illustration: SALLY IN HER FUR COAT WAS RACING THROUGH THE GARDEN
(_page 1_)]




  SALLY IN HER
  FUR COAT

  By
  ELIZA ORNE WHITE
  AUTHOR OF ‘BROTHERS IN FUR,’ ETC.

  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCISSOR-CUTS BY
  LISL HUMMEL

  [Illustration]

  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
  The Riverside Press Cambridge
  1929




  COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY ELIZA ORNE WHITE

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
  THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM

  The Riverside Press
  CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.




  TO
  ELIZABETH F. DUNDASS
  AND
  MARGARET COLTER

  True friends of all in coats of fur,
  Beloved by every cat and kitten,
  Welcomed with many a heart-felt purr,
  Here, gratefully your names are written.




  The world is wide and full of wondrous things
  For all God’s creatures, whether great or small,
  For those who soar aloft on spreading wings,
  Or those who, earth-bound, never fear a fall.
  But surely kittens have a joyous time,
  With ears attuned to every tiny sound,
  And with the power the loftiest tree to climb,
  And eyes that see all creatures on the ground.
  The patter of the rain upon the leaves,
  The ants that swiftly build their tiny house,
  The wind that’s but a gentle summer breeze,
  The stealthy tread of an alluring mouse--
  All this is joy; how could one wish to be
  A man or woman with closed ears and eyes
  To all the treasures of the land and sea,
  And to the glory of the earth and skies?
  And even a child, though nearer to the ground,
  Is often heedless of this wondrous earth,
  Where such enthralling histories are found.
  Who would not be a kitten full of mirth?




CONTENTS


  I. THE ORPHANS                                                       1

      Two orphan kittens without their mother,
        In piteous plight were they,
      A furry sister and her brother
        In coats of tiger gray.

  II. THE COLD NIGHT                                                  10

      If in May the nights are cold,
        When Nature should be thriving,
      Young kittens but a few weeks old
        Think winter is arriving.

  III. THE CAPTURE                                                    19

      Is it best to be captured, or still to be free?
        To have food and a fire, or one’s liberty?
      To be free has its charms, but when hungry and cold,
        To be captured is not at all bad, we are told.

  IV. THE KITTENS AND MISS WINIFRED                                   27

      Politeness is a pleasant trait.
        If we are rude to kittens small,
      We lose their love and win their hate,
        Their friendship is not ours at all.

  V. THE FRIENDLY HOUSE                                               33

      A house is such a pleasant place
        When friends are kind
      And understand our furry race,
        Our heart and mind.

  VI. SALLY AND THE CLOCK                                             41

      All mantelpieces should be wide
        So cats can walk there side by side.
      There should be trees in every room
        For exercise in storm and gloom.

  VII. THE CATNIP MOUSE                                               46

      If I were asked what I would like
        To beautify my house,
      I’d say without a moment’s thought,
        Give me a catnip mouse.

  VIII. THE FIRST SNOWSTORM                                           52

      I love the frostwork on the panes,
        The snowfall on the trees.
      I like the time when winter reigns,
        And lakes and rivers freeze.

  IX. BUSY SALLY                                                      61

      Long naps by day, I like that best,
        When the great sun is hot and bright.
      That seems the time to take a rest,
        After a long and strenuous night.

  X. MOODS                                                            69

      Perhaps the lady in her silk,
        And coat of costly fur,
      Would sometimes like my bowl of milk,
        If she could have my purr.

  XI. PETER                                                           78

      Old Peter I have put to flight
        On more than one occasion.
      He says for country he will fight,
        I call it an invasion.

  XII. SALLY AND THE LOUD SPEAKER                                     87

      Speak gently, it is better far;
        Soft answers are the best,
      And low replies. Loud speakers are
        A nuisance to the rest.

  XIII. SALLY BRACES UP                                               95

      The New Year is a glorious date
        For resolutions splendid,
      And dreams of valor far more great
        Than in the year that’s ended.

  XIV. SALLY AND SPOT                                                102

      A tree is such a pleasant place
        I’ll stay here through the night
      If Spot continues at its base.
        That villain I won’t fight.

  XV. THE FAMILY TREE                                                112

      I long to have a family tree
        And show to all my true descent.
      But Oxford says a family tree
        Is not a tree for kittens meant.
      To know his father is enough
        For he was made of valiant stuff.

  XVI. THE TRAVELING CAT                                             120

      A traveler comes who’s seen the world,
        The harbor and the sea.
      He’s seen the spreading sails unfurled,
        And all life’s mystery.

  XVII. OXFORD GOES ON A JOURNEY                                     127

      Proud scion of a noble race am I;
        The blood of hunters courses through my veins.
      Variety I crave before I die;
        I fear not furious gales, nor autumn rains.

  XVIII. SALLY HAS HER WISH                                          139

      If I cannot have a mother, a mother I will be
        With some darling, furry children of my own.
      The furriest, purriest kittens, the most harum-scarum kittens,
        The liveliest, gayest kittens ever known.

  XIX. SALLY IS YOUNG WITH HER CHILDREN                              147

      We love to run, we love to climb,
        In fact we have a royal time.
      Kings cannot quite so happy be,
        For kings, we hear, are not so free.




[Illustration]

SALLY IN HER FUR COAT

∵




CHAPTER I

THE ORPHANS


Sally in her fur coat was racing through the garden and flying through
the Wild Wood, as if an enemy were in hot pursuit. She was a very young
kitten and small of her age. Her pursuer was not an enemy, but her
twin brother, Oxford Gray, Junior. But although they were born on the
same day, Oxford Gray, Junior, was much fatter than Sally, and he had
shorter legs, so he could never catch up with his little sister. After
a time, he grew tired of the chase, but, being Sally’s brother and
protector, he did not like to own it, so he said:

‘Sally, I am sure all this running about must be bad for you. Come and
lie down under that giant hemlock and we’ll have a good rest.’

‘I am not in the least tired,’ said Sally, and off she scampered again.

By this time Oxford Gray, Junior, was fairly panting.

‘I am sure this mad dash will use you up,’ he said, for he did not like
to own that he was tired.

It finally dawned on Sally that this might be the case, but, being
wise beyond her weeks, she did not speak of this, but came over and
joined her brother under the shade of the giant hemlock in the Wild
Wood. There were many of these hemlocks as well as oak trees. They
were all about as high as a man’s shoulders, but they seemed immense
to the kittens. They were sometimes spoken of by people as underbrush,
but people are often stupid about many matters, as every cat knows. Of
course all this conversation was carried on in kitten language, not in
actual words.

The two kittens curled up under the shade of the giant hemlock in the
Wild Wood, and put their paws about each other’s necks. They were
tiger kittens and looked so much alike that when they were apart, it
was hard to tell which was Sally and which was Oxford Gray, Junior.
When they were together, one saw that Oxford Gray, Junior, was larger,
and that he had more of a white shirt-front than his sister, and he
had a pink nose which she envied, for hers was just a tiger nose. One
also noticed a great difference in their expressions, for Sally had
a sad little face, while Oxford Gray, Junior, looked prosperous and
thoroughly contented with himself. At times it almost seemed as if he
smiled.

‘We are two very unfortunate kittens,’ said Sally; ‘it is sad to be
orphans.’

‘We’ve got to make the best of it,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior. ‘Other
kittens have been orphans before us and others will be orphans after
us. Sally, you must brace up.’

‘When I think of my brave father and of my darling mother, so cozy and
so kind, and of how they mysteriously disappeared, I can’t brace up,’
said Sally. ‘I am sure we are going to starve.’

‘Not while I have my good right paw,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior. ‘I will
get food for you.’

‘You? How? What will you get?’

‘I will catch a mouse,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior, magnificently. ‘Our
father was a mighty hunter.’

‘But you are hardly larger than a mouse yourself,’ said Sally. ‘Father
said so.’

‘That was a very long time ago,’ said her brother. ‘I have grown since
then, and there must be many baby mice just as there are small kittens.
I will be on the lookout for a very young mouse, Sally.’

‘I am sure we shall starve before you can catch a mouse,’ said Sally,
‘for there don’t seem to be any around. We can’t live on flies, and
they are very hard to catch.’

If Sally had been a little girl, she would have cried bitterly, but,
being a kitten, she was more self-controlled.

‘Where are we going to get our next meal?’ she persisted.

‘It will somehow come,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior, who was an optimist.

He sometimes provoked Sally very much, for she was sure she saw things
as they really were.

‘We got some milk other days at that little house,’ he said.

‘Yes, but it is closed to-day,’ she reminded him.

‘Other houses will be open,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior. He glanced up as
he spoke and looked first at one of the two houses that were near the
Wild Wood and then at the other. One house was very attractive, lying
low in the valley with a pretty garden and a giant rhododendron tree
on either side of the front door. The buds were swelling and beginning
to show a hint of crimson. ‘We’ll try to get food at that house,’ said
Oxford Gray, Junior.

‘Don’t you remember what father told us about that house?’ said Sally.
‘He said it had the secret mark that is only known to cats, that says,
“No cats need apply here for food. This is a no-good house.”’

‘Yes, I remember now,’ said her brother, ‘but father said the other
house was all right. That has a secret mark that says, “Welcome, Cats.”’

‘We are not cats,’ said Sally. ‘We are such small kittens I am afraid
no one will see us; father called us “kittenettes,”’ and at the memory
of her father, Sally once more looked very sad.

‘What’s the use of worrying?’ said Oxford Gray, Junior. ‘Something
always has turned up and something always will.’

‘That is rather an ugly house, I think,’ said Sally, as she looked at
the gray house on the hill that said, in its secret language, ‘Welcome,
Cats.’ ‘It seems all pointed roofs and it hasn’t such a pretty garden
as the other house.’

‘I don’t care about its looks,’ said her brother. ‘Don’t you remember
how mother once said, “Handsome is that handsome does,” when you wished
you were an Angora with long yellow fur?’

‘Yes, I remember,’ said Sally, ‘but I wish I were a yellow Angora just
the same. I’d like to be a handsome kitten.’

‘I don’t care at all how I look,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior. ‘I’d rather
be myself. If you were a yellow Angora with long fur, you would not
have me for your twin. How would you like to lose me, Sally?’

At this terrible suggestion, Sally put her paws all the more firmly
around her brother’s neck.

‘You are the whole world to me, Oxford Gray, Junior,’ she said;
‘grandmother, and father and mother and brother, too. The others have
all disappeared, and you are all I have left. It is sad to be orphans,’
she wailed again, in her thought-transference language; ‘but if one has
to be an orphan, it is better to be twins.’

Now Sally and Oxford Gray, Junior, had been so busy about their own
concerns that they had not noticed that a lady came to the bow window
of the house that said ‘Welcome, Cats,’ in its secret language, and
that her eyes rested on the brother and sister in their fur coats,
and so it was a great surprise when they saw her come down the piazza
steps. They were frightened and scampered off as fast as they could go.
The lady put a large blue-and-white dinner plate down on the grass and,
looking around her as if searching for the kittens, she went back into
the house.

‘Poor darlings,’ she said, and there were tears in her eyes; ‘poor
kittens to have lost their mother when they were so young!’

A faint odor of fish greeted the kittens.

‘I do believe there is fish on that plate,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior.
‘Let us go and see.’

When they reached the plate, they saw it had on it a large piece of
mackerel cut in mouthfuls that would just suit them and some potato and
green vegetable about the color of grass. Perhaps it was cooked grass.
They had never seen it before. It had a most satisfying smell. Then the
hungry kittens leaned over the blue-and-white plate, one on one side
and one on the other, and they hungrily ate the delicious fish. Sally
ate daintily and slowly, but Oxford Gray, Junior, gobbled his portion
down very fast and then ate what was left of Sally’s share.

Sally hit him with her paw. There were things that even the gentle
Sally could not stand.

‘That isn’t fair,’ she said.

‘I need more to keep me alive than you do,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior.
‘If I am going to hunt for food for the pair of us, I have to be well
fed.’

‘Do you think you could catch fish?’ Sally asked. ‘I like fish even
better than mouse.’

‘Father was a mighty hunter, but I never heard that he was a
fisherman,’ said her brother. ‘I am afraid I shall have to stick to
hunting. But we are all right for to-day, Sally. Always trust to me.
Did not I tell you something would turn up?’

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER II

THE COLD NIGHT


It rained that afternoon, a cold piercing rain and the thermometer went
down. Nothing like the cold had been known for years in the month of
May. But the kittens did not know this, as they had only weeks to judge
by. They were afraid this sort of weather might last for many days.

‘Where can we spend the night?’ Sally asked Oxford Gray, Junior.

Oxford Gray, for once, was at a loss.

‘If only Elvira would come to the door of the gray house and see us,
she would be sure to let us in.’

‘I don’t know about houses,’ said Sally. ‘Mother warned me about
houses. She said she had lost faith in every one since her first owners
were so unkind and left her to starve when they moved to another town.’

‘Father did not feel that way,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior. ‘He said
Elvira let him into the house one night when there was a great
snowstorm, whatever that is. He said if trouble ever came and we could
get where Elvira could see us, we’d be safe and happy.’

‘Does the house belong to Elvira?’

‘Father wasn’t sure. He had been told it belonged to Miss Winifred
Mann. But he said if it did, it seemed strange she should take so
little interest in it. He said she seemed to be out of it most of the
time, while Elvira stayed in it and made it look pretty and cooked
lots of meals for people and cats, especially cats. Father said Miss
Winifred wasn’t a bad sort, and that she could talk very pleasantly to
a cat, but that was very little good if a fellow wanted a square meal.
Anyway, the house is the thing to go to on a stormy night like this.
Maybe this is a snowstorm.’

‘It can’t be,’ said Sally. ‘Father said snow was white, and that it
made the earth look pretty. Oh, dear, I wish he hadn’t gone away.’

‘Brace up, Sally,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior, who felt it would be
easier to brace up himself if he had the satisfaction of scolding some
one.

‘Where are we to spend the night if we can’t get into the house?’ Sally
asked. ‘That place under the piazza has been fixed so that nothing can
get in any more.’

‘There are other places where we might find shelter,’ said Oxford Gray,
Junior. ‘I’ll go and explore.’

‘I’ll come along with you,’ said Sally, who did not like to be left
alone. ‘When I think of my brave father and my darling mother----’

‘Oh, shut up, Sally,’ said her brother.

As Sally was wise beyond her weeks, she knew that Oxford Gray, Junior,
must be very cold and unhappy, or he would not be so cross, so with her
usual wisdom she said:

‘Oxford Gray, Junior, you will have to be like a father to me, you are
so brave, and I will try to be a mother to you; at least, I can be
loving.’

At these words Oxford Gray, Junior, felt a pleasant glow about the
region of his heart and the cold rain did not seem to matter so much.
He did not say anything, for he was a shy kitten so far as expressing
his feelings was concerned, but Sally knew by the expression of his
face that he was pleased with her words.

‘If we are orphans, it is good to be twins,’ she said again.

[Illustration]

The kittens wandered about in the heavy rain. They were cold and
forlorn, but Sally did not dare to speak of her brave father or her
kind mother again. The two houses that stood inside the same fence
seemed asleep. No one came to any of the windows.

‘Let’s go down into the street,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior. ‘Perhaps
in some of the houses on the street there will be some one who likes
kittens.’

It was quite a long way to the street, down a winding avenue, so the
kittens took a short cut through the Wild Wood, and when the street
was reached Oxford Gray, Junior, was timid about crossing it, for
automobiles were going by very fast.

‘It hardly seems safe for you to cross, Sally,’ he said. ‘I think I had
better go and look around first.’

‘I don’t want to be left behind,’ said Sally, and before Oxford Gray,
Junior, knew what she was doing, Sally had gone across the street so
fast that it seemed as if she were flying. Oxford Gray, Junior, watched
his chance and went across to join her.

They went along past the row of apartment houses, but no one came out
to say a friendly word to the unfortunate kittens.

‘Let’s go around to the back of the houses,’ said Sally. ‘I’m very
hungry. Maybe some one will give us something to eat.’

Oxford Gray, Junior, followed his enterprising sister, and there on the
back porch of a house was a saucer of milk. They could hardly believe
their eyes.

‘Didn’t I tell you,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior, ‘that something nice
would happen?’

Oxford Gray, Junior, took his place on one side of the saucer of milk,
and Sally took her place on the other side and they began to lap the
milk in haste. When it was all but gone, they heard the opening of a
door, and Sally saw an angry woman coming out of it.

‘You little thieves, you little scoundrels!’ said the woman. ‘You come
and steal our cat’s milk!’

‘They were probably very hungry,’ said a man in a kind voice.

‘It’s bad enough to feed one cat, because you are so daft on them,’
said the woman, ‘but I can’t feed the whole neighborhood. Scat! Get
away with you and never show your tiger faces here any more, you brats!’

[Illustration]

The kittens fairly flew down the steps and out into the pouring rain.

‘Well, we had a good meal, anyhow,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior. ‘How
could we tell the milk wasn’t meant for any kitten that got there
first?’

They went back to the Wild Wood. It seemed more like home than any
other place, and Oxford Gray, Junior, always had the hope that the door
of the gray house on the hill might open and kind Elvira come out and
welcome him.

At last they found an opening under one of the piazzas. This one had
not as yet been fixed so that no animal could crawl in and take shelter
there. It was a small hole, but large enough for Sally to get in
easily. Oxford Gray, Junior, had to squeeze in.

‘Didn’t I tell you that we should find shelter?’ he said.

Sally wanted to say, ‘Oh, shut up!’ but, being wise beyond her weeks,
she said nothing.

She did not like the shelter. It was not her idea of what a home should
be. There were cracks in the boards that let in some of the rain, and
there was a musty smell that she did not like, and it was cold, even
there.

Oxford Gray, Junior, fell asleep long before she did. She stayed awake
a long time, trying to plan out some way of getting into some warm
house where they could have a fire and some good food to eat. Her
mother had told her of such a house where she had spent her early days
before her owners moved away and left her behind, and her brave father
had told her of three where he had been an honored guest.

The rain kept on pattering on the boards overhead, and Sally grew more
and more forlorn and thought of her brave father and her dear mother,
and life seemed hard. She was provoked with her brother for taking
things so calmly.

What should she do without him, though?

At last she went to sleep, repeating to herself her refrain, ‘If one
has to be an orphan, it is better to be twins.’




[Illustration]

CHAPTER III

THE CAPTURE


The next morning the sun shone brightly, and this in itself made the
kittens feel in better spirits. Oxford Gray, Junior, who had had a
fine night’s sleep, was positively gay, and Sally forbore to mention
her brave father and her dear mother. Perhaps, after all, Oxford Gray,
Junior, was right and something would turn up.

And something did turn up. It was toward the end of the afternoon, and
they were beginning to wonder where they were to get their next meal.
Oxford Gray, Junior, had caught a fly or two and found some bugs, but
he had not been able to get a mouse. He had felt it important to keep
up his own strength, as he had to take care of Sally, and she ought
to learn to brace up and look out for herself. She did get a couple of
bugs, and they had had a little grass, but no plate of fish had been
put out for them again, for no one had seen them.

They were at play under the giant rhododendron bush that was on the
south side of the pretty house that was not friendly to cats, when the
exciting event happened. The front door opened, and out of it came a
very pretty young lady. She had yellow hair and wore a pretty blue
dress, and was exactly the sort of a lady that Sally would like to be
herself, with a warm house to live in with plenty of food.

‘Goodness,’ said the pretty girl, ‘something must be done about you,
poor little dears,’ and she looked from Sally to Oxford Gray, Junior.
‘If only my cook liked cats--as it is, I can’t keep you myself.’

She stooped and picked Sally up and started in the direction of the
gray house on the hill.

When Sally found that Oxford Gray, Junior, was left behind, she was
very unhappy. She kept saying in her own language: ‘Please, I can’t be
separated from my dear, brave brother. I have lost my grandmother, and
my darling mother, so cozy and so kind, and my brave father, the mighty
hunter, and my brother is all I have.’

The lady, however, did not seem to understand, for she went straight on
toward the gray house. Then Sally began to struggle frantically to get
out of the hand of the pretty lady. She scratched as hard as she could
with her small claws. Without Oxford Gray, Junior, there would be no
happiness in life. She would rather live in the Wild Wood with him and
be hungry and cold than to be warm and well fed without him.

‘It is wicked to separate twins,’ she said, but, in spite of all her
scratchings, the lady walked on to the door of the gray house.

As they approached the door, to Sally’s joy, she saw with her own
bright eyes the sign her father had described to her, ‘Welcome, Cats.’
There was a knocker on the door and the pretty lady gave a loud rap,
and presently it was opened and Elvira stood before them. Sally was
sure it was Elvira, for she had the beaming look when she saw Sally
that her father had described.

‘What shall I do about this kitten?’ the pretty lady asked. ‘I can’t
keep it, and the mother does not seem to be around.’

‘There are two of them,’ said Elvira; ‘I have seen two.’

‘Yes, there is another one outside, but he was scampering off so fast I
don’t know that I can catch him.’

‘Oh, please do,’ Sally said in her own language, ‘or else let me go, I
can’t be separated from him.’

At last she had come across some one who understood kitten language,
for Elvira said: ‘It would be a pity to separate them. Wherever they
go, they should be kept together. Miss Mann has not planned to have any
more cats, and yet, if she sees the kittens, maybe--at any rate, I’ll
give them shelter for the night and a good square meal.’

‘I’ll see if I can catch the other,’ said the lady.

‘That will be very kind of you, Mrs. Conant,’ said Elvira.

‘Mrs. Conant’--so she was a married lady. Sally had not dreamed of
this, she looked so young.

Now, Oxford Gray, Junior, when he was left alone was very
disconsolate. He had not realized how fond he was of his little sister.
To lose Sally--why, to lose her was like losing the sun out of the sky.
Sally might be sad and woe-begone, just as the sun might hide behind
clouds, but you knew the bright Sally would come back. And now she had
gone, and it might be that she, too, like his grandmother, and his
father, and mother, would never be seen again.

‘I’d be better to her if I only had her back,’ said Oxford Gray,
Junior. ‘I’d let her have more of the food, but of course she really
ought to learn to brace up.’

It seemed a long time to Oxford Gray, Junior, before the lady came down
the steps of the house without Sally, for when one is not many weeks
old, minutes seem very long.

‘What have you done with my sister?’ Oxford Gray, Junior, asked
sternly; but the lady, although she looked unusually intelligent,
evidently could not understand his language.

[Illustration]

Well, at any rate, he was not going to be caught until he knew more
about the lady. So he made a mad dash for the garden. The lady ran
after him and they had an exciting race. He jumped up on top of a
barrel and she reached after him; he went under a garden seat, and
the agile lady ducked down after him; he gave a flying leap, and it
almost seemed as if she gave a flying leap, too. At last, panting
and exhausted, he stopped for breath and the lady captured him. He,
like his sister, scratched her pretty hand. She went straight to the
door through which she had taken Sally. She gave a loud rap with the
knocker and Elvira appeared at the door.

‘I have caught the other one,’ she said.

‘Bless his furry heart and his pink nose,’ said Elvira. ‘I am sure this
one is a boy; he seems so brave and he led you such a chase.’

Then Oxford Gray, Junior, swelled with pride.

‘He’s the image of his father, Oxford Gray,’ said Elvira, ‘even to the
pink nose. He’s much fatter than the other kitten, but she seems a dear
little thing.’

‘Well, I’ll leave the pair of them in your care,’ said Mrs. Conant, as
she put Oxford Gray, Junior, down on the floor.

Sally was perfectly delighted to see her brother, and he was very glad
to see her.

Meanwhile Elvira was getting something out of the pantry for them. She
brought out two saucers of milk. It was very delicious, and when Oxford
Gray, Junior, had finished his saucer, he came around to help Sally
with hers. She gave him a slap with her paw, but it had no effect.

‘It is my saucer of milk,’ said Sally.

‘You should lap faster! It is mine now,’ he said.

‘Aren’t they dears?’ said Elvira’s friend, Miss Harvey, ‘poor little
things.’

‘I like this one best, he shall be mine,’ Elvira said, as she captured
Oxford Gray, Junior, and held him in her arms. ‘See how much he looks
like his noble father, Oxford Gray?’

‘Then this one shall be mine,’ and Miss Harvey took the small Sally in
her arms. ‘The poor little thing looks thin and half-starved, but she
is a dear little kitten with such a pretty face.’

At these words Sally felt very happy, for no one had said anything so
kind to her since her mother died.

‘Poor little orphan,’ said Miss Harvey, ‘I will be a second mother to
you.’

Sally thought how cozy and sweet Miss Harvey looked, and Miss Harvey’s
big heart went out to the forlorn little creature in her arms. Suddenly
Sally put her two paws around Miss Harvey’s neck.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV

THE KITTENS AND MISS WINIFRED


The next morning when Miss Winifred came into the kitchen, the kittens
were in the clothes-basket which was under a table, so she did not
see them. She was deciding what she would have for dinner, and at the
sound of the word haddock, which Elvira suggested, the kittens became
interested. It seemed that if one owned a house, all one had to do was
to say what food one wanted. The kittens would have supposed it would
be just the other way.

When the meals were all decided on, Elvira said, ‘I had a present
yesterday from Mrs. Conant.’

‘How nice!’ said Miss Winifred, who was very fond of her young
neighbor. ‘I am sure it was something you wanted.’

‘Yes,’ said Elvira, ‘she could not have given me anything I would have
liked better.’

‘Aren’t you going to show it to me?’

‘You must have three guesses first.’

‘I think it is an apron,’ said Miss Winifred.

‘No, it is something with more warmth in it than an apron.’

‘It must be a sweater.’

‘No, it is warmer still.’

‘It isn’t the right season for a fur neck-piece,’ said Miss Winifred.

‘It is made of fur, though,’ said Elvira, and she picked up Oxford
Gray, Junior, and held him before Miss Winifred’s astonished eyes.
‘Isn’t he the living image of his father, Oxford Gray?’ she asked.

Now, Miss Winifred’s heart softened the moment she saw Oxford Gray,
Junior, but she had determined not to have another cat, so she tried to
look stern.

‘I never did like a tiger kitten with white feet so well as an all
tiger cat. Sam used to look like a miniature tiger in the jungle,’
and at the memory of Sam, Miss Winifred looked sad, for this pet of
Elvira’s had found his way to her heart. ‘He will always have dirty
feet, just as his father had.’ She put on her eye-glasses so as to see
him better. ‘I don’t think you are so very much to look at,’ she said,
hardening her heart.

[Illustration]

Oxford Gray, Junior’s feelings were deeply hurt.

‘I have said I never wanted another cat,’ Miss Winifred added.

‘I never expected he would be yours,’ said Elvira; ‘of course it’s your
house, but you wouldn’t want to be alone in it.’

At this Miss Winifred laughed merrily and her glasses tumbled off.

‘Of course, we’ll have to keep the kitten for two or three days until
he has had a few meals and then we can take him to the Ellen Gifford
Home; they find such good places for cats.’

‘I don’t think they could find a better home than this,’ said Elvira.

‘We might find a home for him where the mistress is just longing for a
cat,’ said Miss Winifred.

‘There is another one,’ said Elvira, and she took the frightened Sally
out of the clothes-basket. ‘You would not have the heart to separate a
brother and sister.’

Sally jumped out of Elvira’s hands and took refuge under a table. If
Miss Winifred could make such unkind remarks about the appearance of
her handsome brother, what would she say when she saw her!

But you never could foresee what Miss Winifred would do. As soon as
she saw thin little Sally with her pitiful expression, her heart was
touched.

‘Poor little thing,’ she said. ‘We must certainly feed her up before
we take her to the Home. We can get Mrs. Conant to run us up there in
her car, just before Elvira and I start for New Hampshire, Miss Harvey,
so that you will not have to be bothered with the care of two little
kittens while we are gone.’

The kittens liked their new home, and they hoped very much that they
would not be sent away, for surely no one could be kinder than Elvira
and Miss Harvey.

They were always running around the kitchen whenever Miss Winifred went
there, and, as she was very near-sighted, she once stepped on Sally’s
tail.

Sally and Oxford Gray, Junior, talked the matter over.

‘Her feet seem always getting in our way,’ said Sally.

‘I am glad she is going to New Hampshire,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior.
‘We’ll have a little peace, but I wish Elvira wasn’t going with her.’

They were glad, on the whole, that no one could understand their
language, although it would be convenient at times to be understood.

Elvira was somewhat troubled by them, but she loved them too well to
think of parting with them, and soon, when they had grown used to their
new home, it would be safe to let them out-of-doors again.

By the time Miss Winifred and Elvira came back from New Hampshire, Miss
Harvey and the kittens had become such firm friends that nothing more
was said about sending them to the Ellen Gifford Home.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER V

THE FRIENDLY HOUSE


Sally was sure she liked houses. She liked the house where her new
friends lived from the very start. A corner under a piazza where the
rain could come through the cracks in the boards overhead had never
seemed her idea of what a home should be, nor did she care to spend
most of her time out-of-doors looking for food which was hard to find.
So she settled down quite contentedly, and it did not trouble her that,
while Elvira and Miss Winifred were in New Hampshire, Miss Harvey kept
her and Oxford Gray, Junior, in the house. She always spoke of the
three ladies in the following order, Miss Harvey, Elvira, and Miss
Winifred. Her brother told her that she should speak of Miss Winifred
first because she was the oldest and the owner of the house, and of
Miss Harvey next, and Elvira last, because she was the youngest of the
three, but Sally persisted in her own way.

‘I love Miss Harvey best, so I speak of her first, and I love Miss
Winifred less than the others, so she comes last.’

[Illustration]

It was not until Elvira and Miss Winifred had been at home some days
that Miss Harvey said to Sally one morning, ‘You are such a good little
kitten, I am going to let you through into the other part of the house
while I am dusting the rooms.’

[Illustration]

Sally had always wondered what was on the other side of the door. She
had heard from her father that the rooms were large and that there
were many pictures of Miss Winifred’s ancestors hanging on the walls.
He had told her there was a portrait of Miss Winifred’s mother over
the mantelpiece in the hall. Sally had never seen a picture, and so
she looked at them with great interest. So that little girl in a fur
cape was Miss Winifred’s mother! How odd it seemed that a lady so
old herself had had a mother who was once a little girl! There were
other portraits in the parlor and dining-room, all pictures of Miss
Winifred’s relations, she was sure.

She looked in vain for any pictures of her own ancestors. Surely so
many Furbush-Tailbys had lived in the house, she should think Miss
Winifred would have framed portraits of them hanging on the walls. Her
great-great-grandmother, Martha Furbush-Tailby, would have made a nice
picture, and her great-grandfather, William Furbush-Tailby, the poet,
would certainly have been an ornament to the walls. And these relations
of Miss Mann’s looked so queer in their old-fashioned clothes, while
her own ancestors would have looked as much up-to-date as Oxford Gray,
Junior, himself, for she had been told they all had the gray tiger
markings and broad white shirt-fronts like himself, and every one of
them had white feet. And so far as tails were concerned, they were
all noted for the fine tiger markings; she herself was proud of her
tail. Yes, it would have made the sober green walls of the parlor
far pleasanter to look at if there had been portraits there of her
ancestors.

At last she saw a picture with a house and church in the distance, and
there, walking on the grass in the foreground, were two ladies, and a
little boy, and a dog. Here at last was an animal. The ladies wore long
skirts that trailed on the grass and bonnets that hid their faces, and
the little boy wore odd clothes, too, but the dog looked exactly like
one that Sally had met in the Wild Wood and scampered away from.

‘Yes,’ said Sally, ‘it only shows how sensible and superior animals
are, to be so made that they never have to change with the fashion.’

There was another room that was filled with books. It had a desk in
it and Miss Winifred’s typewriter, and a sofa that looked as if it
would be a pleasant place for a kitten to take a nap. There were
window-seats, too. The sun was pouring in on them. Sally jumped up on
one and settled down. The sun felt warm and pleasant on her back.

‘It is a friendly house,’ said Sally. ‘I like it, but some of the
pictures would look so much nicer with kittens in them. The little
girl with the fur over her shoulders would look much sweeter if she
had a kitten in her arms. I am sure she would have loved a nice, furry
kitten.’

There was a mantelpiece in this room that Sally longed to explore, for
there were candelabra on it, one at either end with two candles in each
of them and dangling metal things hanging down from them that Sally
longed to play with. She knew they could swing, for she saw Miss Harvey
dusting them, so while Miss Harvey was dusting the table, she jumped up
on the mantelpiece by way of the sofa and began to play with them.

When she went back into the kitchen, she told Oxford Gray, Junior,
about the charms of the friendly house. He was greatly interested when
he heard of the mantelpiece with the candlesticks with the swinging
pendants.

‘I think maybe Miss Harvey wouldn’t like you to touch them,’ said Sally.

‘Miss Harvey!’ He spoke a little contemptuously. ‘Why should I do any
more harm than you?’

So the kittens watched their chance, and one day they slipped through
the door that was left partly open so that Miss Harvey could hear the
telephone in the other part of the house.

Oxford Gray, Junior, hardly paused to look at anything in the other
rooms. He did not care for the portraits of Miss Winifred’s ancestors.

‘They all have on such old-fashioned clothes,’ he said. ‘Our ancestors
would look much more up-to-date.’

‘That is what I thought myself,’ said Sally.

Oxford and Sally went into the library where the candelabra stood on
the mantelpiece.

‘There’ll be a candlestick for each of us to play with,’ said Sally.

Oxford thought it would be exciting to get to the mantelpiece ahead of
Sally, and Sally wanted to get there first, so they had a mad race to
the sofa and then they gave a jump that landed them on the mantelpiece.
Alas! the mantelpiece was not wide enough for the pair of them, and the
first thing they knew was that they had knocked one of the candlesticks
off the mantelpiece and had tumbled off themselves and were lying on
the floor with the ruins of the broken wax candles.

The kittens were very much frightened. Sally rushed under the sofa and
Oxford Gray, Junior, took refuge under a chair.

Elvira, who was in the kitchen, heard the noise, and came in to see
what had happened. They heard her step in the hall.

‘If we are very quiet,’ said Sally, in her thought-transference
language, ‘Elvira will never find us. She’ll think the candlestick just
fell off of itself.’

‘For mercy sakes!’ said Elvira, as she saw the broken candles on the
floor. ‘You little rascal, what have you been doing?’ and she fixed her
eyes on Oxford Gray, Junior. ‘I suppose Sally is somewhere about. Oh,
yes! there she is under the sofa.’

‘It wasn’t our fault,’ said Oxford. ‘It is just the fault of that old
mantelpiece--it’s too narrow. Miss Winifred ought to have made her
house more convenient for kittens.’

But, alas! Elvira couldn’t understand his language.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI

SALLY AND THE CLOCK


What Sally missed more than anything in her restricted life in the
house was trees. There was something that was called a hat-tree in the
hall, but it was a poor thing with no branches and merely a series
of pegs, on which some garments hung at times. And in the parlor
there was a very tall tree that Miss Harvey called a palm, that was
no good for climbing purposes, because it was so slimsy. Sally could
not see why Miss Winifred did not have an oak tree instead, for there
were plenty of them around the Wild Wood and one of them would never
be missed. If there had never been cats living here before, Sally
could have understood it, but there had been so many living here. Her
great-great-grandmother, Martha Furbush-Tailby, had lived here, and
her great-grandfather, William Furbush-Tailby, had been born in the
house. She should have supposed Miss Winifred would have wanted to make
things comfortable for them.

Sally and Oxford Gray, Junior, took to climbing Elvira and Miss Harvey
as a substitute for trees. They preferred Elvira when she was in a
friendly mood because she was so much taller, but she occasionally made
disrespectful remarks, and said such words as ‘You little rascals, you
little villains, you’ve torn my apron.’ Miss Harvey, on the other hand,
seemed to understand, and not to mind the sudden surprise of a kitten
running up her dress and landing on her shoulder and then pulling a
comb out of her hair.

‘The poor little dears, they have no trees to climb,’ she would say.
‘They’ll be all right as soon as they are so used to the house that
they will not run away if we let them out.’

There was another thing Sally could not understand. It did not seem
at all reasonable to her that on cold days in June, when the house
felt damp, there was no fire in the furnace. She had learned that the
registers were places where heat came up in the winter. But why not
have a furnace fire in summer when it was cold? Certainly cats could
run a house much better than people if they had the chance.

Although Miss Winifred had not been thoughtful enough to make
mantelpieces wide enough for two kittens to walk there together, Sally
did not by any means give up her desire to explore such delightful
walks. In the kitchen the clock on a small shelf had a pointed roof and
that in the dining-room had an ornament on top of it, but the parlor
clock had a flat roof, so to speak, and Sally was sure it would be a
grand place to sit and see the world from a high place, just as people
saw it, for the top of the clock was only a little lower than Miss
Harvey’s head. There were no candlesticks on this mantelpiece and the
small ornaments were so placed as to leave plenty of room for a cat.
There were two routes to the desired spot, one was by a low bookcase
which could be reached by a chair, and the other, by the way of the
piano. This Sally decided would be the best, for one of her favorite
seats was the piano, which could be easily reached by a chair.

Miss Harvey was reading aloud to Miss Winifred at the time. She had
found that Sally was such a good kitten and stepped so daintily that
she let her go wherever she liked. So she climbed from a chair to the
piano and then gave a leap to the mantelpiece, and then she got up on
top of the clock. She found it a comfortable seat, and it was fine to
be so high up, for she could look down on the heads of dear Miss Harvey
and Miss Winifred, who really wasn’t a bad sort, except for her feet
that were always getting in one’s way. The room looked very different
now she was so high up. This must be the way it looked to people, with
the rug very far off and no one noticing the table legs. She was in no
hurry to get down from her high perch, so she sat there a long time
washing her face.

‘Look at Sally!’ said Miss Harvey.

Miss Winifred put on her glasses.

Just then a singular thing happened that gave Sally a scare. Something
inside the clock went off. She had heard clocks strike before, of
course, but never when she was so near. It was the loudest thing she
had ever heard. ‘One, two, three’--by this time the frightened Sally
was off the clock and on the mantelpiece, preparing to give a flying
leap to the piano, but her curiosity overcame her fear, and she looked
behind the clock to see if she could find out where the noise came
from. ‘Four, five, six’--by this time she was on the piano again. Would
the thing never stop? Had she set something going by being on top of
it? ‘Seven, eight.’ That was all. She hoped she had not ruined it. But
of one thing she was sure. She would never try to view the world again
from the top of the parlor clock.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII

THE CATNIP MOUSE


There is a first time for everything, whether one is a little girl, or
a boy, or a kitten. For a little girl, there is her first doll, and
later her first pretty doll with real hair and blue eyes that will
open and shut. For a boy there is his first ball, and his first set of
marbles; but if you are a kitten, greater than all of these joys put
together is the thrill that comes when you have your first catnip mouse.

Oxford Gray, Junior, and Sally could measure their young lives by
months instead of weeks before this exciting event occurred. They
had heard there were such things, for there had been a tradition in
the family of a glorious catnip mouse that had belonged to their
ancestress, Martha Furbush-Tailby. But it is one thing to hear about a
catnip mouse and quite another to have it for one’s very own plaything.

Cool days and nights had come. It was the autumn, and all things furry
were seeking snug quarters for the winter. The kittens were glad that
they had their cozy kitchen to live in. Oxford Gray, Junior, however,
sometimes went off on an excursion for hours, but Sally kept pretty
closely to the house. And besides cats and kittens, there were others
that sought winter quarters.

‘There seem to be a lot of mice about,’ Miss Winifred had said to
Elvira. ‘I hear them in the wall.’

‘I can do a good deal for you, Miss Winifred,’ said Elvira, ‘but
catching mice is not in my line.’

Miss Winifred laughed. ‘I should think some of your followers might do
it for you,’ she said, and she looked at Oxford Gray, Junior.

Although Oxford Gray, Junior, did not care much for the owner of the
house, this put him on his mettle, and the very next night he caught
his first mouse. The praise given him was so great that he caught
three others within a week.

It was then that Miss Winifred said to Elvira, ‘I wonder if the kittens
are not old enough to like a catnip mouse?’

‘Old enough?’ said Elvira. ‘I have been thinking for weeks they ought
to have one, but I have been out very little it has stormed so much.’

‘A catnip mouse!’ The kittens were entranced at the idea. They could
hardly wait for the time to come when they could have one for their
very own.

It was late one November afternoon when Elvira came into the house
after a trip to Boston. She had hardly got inside the door before the
kittens noticed a peculiar and very delicious smell. It seemed to them
to be sweeter than the odor of roses and violets and mignonette and
sweet peas. They looked at each other in glad surprise.

‘I am sure she has brought us a catnip mouse,’ said Sally.

She got up on the kitchen table and sniffed at Elvira’s bag.

‘Yes, you witch,’ said Elvira. ‘It is a catnip mouse all right, but
you must be patient and wait until I get my things off.’

Learning that it really was a catnip mouse, Oxford Gray, Junior, jumped
up on the table and joined his sister. She was sitting there patiently,
but Oxford Gray, Junior, began to claw at the bag to try to get at the
catnip mouse.

‘You are a bad kitten,’ said Elvira, taking her bag away. ‘You don’t
deserve the catnip mouse. Why can’t you behave well like your sister?’

‘It was I that caught all those mice. Sally could never catch a mouse
to save her life,’ said Oxford Gray, Junior.

‘I could, too, and I will some day,’ said Sally.

But even the intelligent Elvira did not seem to understand what was
being said.

Elvira undid her bag and flung something down on the floor. It was
the catnip mouse. It was shaped like a real mouse, and was full of
catnip. Oxford and Sally ran toward it. Sally had it in her mouth and
Oxford knocked it with his paw. Sally dropped it and Oxford tried to
capture it. And then to their surprise, another of the wonderful things
fell to the floor. There were two of them! Two catnip mice--one for
each of them! Who but Elvira would have thought of bringing home two
catnip mice. Oxford took his mouse and ran under the table to enjoy it
by himself, and Sally went under a chair with hers. The mice were so
marvelous the kittens were afraid that some one would take them away
after a short time.

Such thoughts they had as they inhaled the delicious scent. Oxford came
out into the room at last and threw his mouse up into the air. It fell
lightly to the ground. Then Sally came out with her mouse and threw
it up into the air. They were so excited and overstimulated that they
began to break into verse.

  Elvira, Elvira, how we admire her!
  We give her warmest praise.
  She must sometime have been a cat,
  We both are very sure of that,
  A cat who lived in prehistoric days.
  Elvira, Elvira, how we admire her!

It seemed almost as if Elvira had understood, for she said to Miss
Harvey, ‘See how excited the kittens are. It reminds me of Martha
Furbush-Tailby’s first catnip mouse and her verses.’

  Sweet are the lessons of adversity,
    At least so people say;
  But sweeter is prosperity,
    I’ve learned that much to-day.

  For when the catnip mouse is new
    And full of catnip strength,
  The hours fly by on shining wings
    Not measured by their length.

  If I were asked what I would like
    To beautify my house,
  I’d say without a moment’s thought,
    ‘Give me a catnip mouse.’




[Illustration]

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIRST SNOWSTORM


Sally sat at the window watching her first snowstorm. She was entranced
by the way the flakes fell. They came down so softly, flying through
the air like tiny white butterflies, and when they reached the earth,
they all joined together in a wonderful white blanket.

‘Oxford,’ she said, ‘isn’t this a beautiful world? Doesn’t it seem as
if millions of tiny white butterflies were coming down to cover the
earth with a white blanket?’

‘It looks more like powder to me, or rice,’ said Oxford. ‘I don’t see
anything pretty about it. It’s just frozen rain.’

[Illustration]

It was when her brother said things like this that Sally longed
to have children who might perhaps be like her and understand how
truly beautiful this wonderful world is. She did so wish that her
great-grandfather was alive, for she was sure he would be a satisfying
companion. He was a poet, and Elvira had sometimes read some of his
verses aloud. They had been published in a book, and there were
others that had never been printed. She longed to ask Elvira if her
great-grandfather, William Furbush-Tailby, had ever written a poem
about a snowstorm, but, although Elvira was unusually intelligent, for
a person, Sally could not always make her thought-transference language
understood. This time, however, it seemed to work, for Elvira took a
book with writing in it out of a drawer in the cupboard and she said to
Miss Harvey, ‘Did I ever read you Billy Furbush-Tailby’s poem on “The
First Snowstorm of the Season”?’

Sally pricked up her ears, but Oxford Gray, Junior, went off to sleep,
for verses bored him.

  They fall so softly from the sky,
    All coming down together;
  Why did they leave the regions high
    To give us stormy weather?

  Did they take pity on the earth
    That looked so bare and brown,
  As if it needed a new birth,
    And so came fluttering down?

  Did they remember children small,
    Who longed to slide and coast,
  And so came down with a great fall
    In a glad, joyous host?

  I watch the people as they pass
    And snowflakes as they fall,
  I watch the puddle that’s like glass,
    I’m glad that I am small.

  For it is cozy in the house,
    Beside the kitchen stove,
  Watching to get a gliding mouse
    While my three brothers rove,

  And scamper through the falling flakes,
    No thought of verse have they,
  While kind Elvira brews and bakes,
    Upon this snowy day,

  Dishes that cats and kittens love,
    They are a pleasant sight;
  I let my brothers freely rove,
    I stay at home and write.

Sally was much impressed by the verses of her ancestor. She wished he
were here now, sitting by her on the window-sill, for Oxford Gray,
Junior, was so tiresome at times. ‘Rice, indeed, or powder!’ What a way
to speak of these marvelous fluttering things that came down to earth
from another country as if bringing a message of peace and good will!

There was a great deal to be seen from the windows of the house. Sally
went at an early hour to the window in the hall and sat on the broad
leather cushion looking out. Miss Harvey had let her come through
when she went in to dust the parlor. Sally was greatly interested in
watching Mr. Gardiner shovel out the board walk with his big wooden
shovel. It seemed a foolish piece of work to her, for no sooner had he
shoveled off the snow than more came. ‘Why not wait until the snowstorm
was over?’ thought Sally. But people were so stupid compared with cats!

Mr. Gardiner looked cold and tired, and as if he would like to take
Sally’s advice. He kept on working though, and the snowflakes kept on
falling. It was too bad that they would not let Oxford into this part
of the house, but ever since the candlestick had been knocked off the
study mantelpiece, they seemed to feel one cat inside was enough. They
had given him one or two more trials when there was a mouse inside,
but he had clawed a sofa cushion, and scratched a piano leg, when
sharpening his claws. If he had only behaved well, he could have been
sitting on this green cushion watching the snowstorm, for there were
three windows and he could have had one to himself. Mr. Gardiner spied
Sally in the window and he made a low bow.

‘He has the best manners of any man I ever saw,’ Sally thought. ‘Men
usually do not stop to be polite to cats.’

[Illustration]

Miss Harvey was standing in the hall just behind Sally, but Sally was
sure the bow had been meant for herself.

When Sally went back into the kitchen, she found there was much more
to be seen there, for Elvira had thrown out some food for the birds,
and there were sparrows and grackles and pigeons picking up the crumbs.
There was some suet hanging on the branch of a pine tree and a bird
was feeding on it, swinging back and forth. Sally looked across at
the opposite house, and she saw Mrs. Conant in a storm-coat and hat
coming over to the plank walk. Perhaps this was why Mr. Gardiner had
been shoveling the snow off the plank walk so as to make it easier for
people to walk there.

Oxford was sitting at one of the kitchen windows, and Sally was in the
other. Mrs. Conant waved to them and to Elvira as she passed. Here was
another polite person.

The most exciting of all the windows was the bow window in the
dining-room at three o’clock in the afternoon. Sally had gone there for
a change and to have a little peace, for Oxford was in a trying mood.
Elvira came into the room with a plateful of crumbled-up bread in her
hand and opened the window. Sally looked out and saw a dozen pheasants
coming forward to get the bread. They all had sober feathers except
one bird, the pheasant cock, Elvira called him. He had a beautiful
white ring around his neck and a glorious long tail.

‘It is not so fine a tail as mine,’ said Sally, for her long tail with
its tiger markings was her chief beauty, and was often remarked on.
‘But he has the best tail I have ever seen on a bird.’

Presently a cat came up stealthily, and the pheasants took instant
flight. The cat looked cold and hungry, and Sally thought how fortunate
she was to be in a warm house herself. The kittens had very little milk
for supper, for the storm was such a bad one that the milkman had not
come.

‘We can get along without milk better than Sally and Oxford can, for
they would not understand,’ Elvira said to Miss Harvey as she put the
last milk in the pitcher into the kittens’ saucers.

‘We understand perfectly well,’ Sally said. ‘We are not such fools as
you take us for. We can understand all that you say, and you never can
understand us.’

It was snowing when Sally and Oxford gave a last look out of the
window before they settled down for the night, but in the morning all
was changed, and when the sun rose, the whole world was like fairyland,
for the branches were all glistening in the sun, as if they were made
of glass. The kittens went out for a stroll and met Mrs. Conant and her
husband. They kept sinking down through the crust, but Sally and Oxford
were so light they could walk on it with ease. Mrs. Conant was wearing
a beautiful fur coat.

‘It is almost as good-looking as mine,’ thought Sally, ‘but it must be
hard to be so big that one can’t walk on the crust. In winter I’d much
rather be a cat.’




[Illustration]

CHAPTER IX

BUSY SALLY


Sally was a very busy cat, and she always gave her whole attention to
whatever she was doing, whether it was sitting on her register, or
washing her face, or helping Miss Harvey make the beds. Indeed, Miss
Harvey often would say, ‘Sally, you are like the little busy bee,’
and she would repeat a part of the poem. Sally had her own opinion of
the little busy bee, and she did not especially like to be told she
was like him, for she had been stung by a bee on one occasion. Who
could have suspected that anything so small could hurt one so much?
And then where was he in winter? Certainly not gathering honey from
every opening flower. She suspected he was in snug quarters resting and
leading an idle life, while she was busy all the year around. First
there was the delicious breakfast that Miss Harvey gave Oxford and
herself, of warm milk and oatmeal, and then she spent a great deal of
time washing herself. And she had to help Oxford, for he could not wash
behind his ears, and then he would wash behind Sally’s ears to help her
out. And it took a good deal of time to manicure her nails.

But where she felt she was of the greatest use was in helping Miss
Harvey with the beds, for dear Miss Harvey might have been lonely
without her. Did she not often say, ‘You are my little comfort’? To
be sure she sometimes said, ‘Troublesome comfort,’ but it was a great
deal to be any comfort. Sally never heard Miss Harvey call any one
else in the house a comfort, not even Oxford, who deserved such words,
for he was ridding the house of mice. So Miss Harvey and Sally would
go upstairs to make the beds; as soon as Miss Harvey had turned back
the mattress and put on a sheet, Sally would jump on the bed and knead
the sheet with her paws. But she liked to get on the blankets much the
best, they were so soft and woolly, and sometimes after patticaking
them well and going around in a circle as if she were making a bed
for herself in the Wild Wood, she would curl herself up in a ball and
settle down for a nap. It was then that Miss Harvey would call her a
troublesome comfort and gently take her off and put her on a chair. But
Sally would be back again and on the spread.

One of Sally’s most interesting occupations was looking out of the
windows. There was so much to be seen even in winter, but when the
spring came and there was a faint green fuzz on the trees, and the
birds came back from the South and began to sing, and Sally could sun
herself out-of-doors, she was busier than ever.

At this time of year the nights were more interesting than the days,
and she was only sorry that her dear Miss Harvey did not agree with her
as to how a night should be spent. Miss Harvey seemed to think that all
cats ought to be in bed at a certain hour, like people, whereas every
cat knows that so much goes on at night one hates to miss that it is
hard to be forced to stay in the house. Sally spent a great deal of
time sleeping by day. That was the sensible way. To race about until
one was tired and then take a long nap. And these naps could be taken
at noon when it was too hot to be out-of-doors. But even though Sally
was closed in at night, there was a great deal going on which she could
enjoy. There were concerts given by her cat friends, and there was the
wonderful moonlight that made it so bright out-of-doors, and there was
the excitement of the sound of the scurrying of small feet through the
walls and the thought that perhaps one could catch another mouse. She
agreed with her ancestress, Martha Furbush-Tailby, about these things,
and liked her verses on the subject.

[Illustration]

  How can one ever sleep at night,
  When mice are scampering through the walls,
  And other cats long for a fight,
  And give their piercing, shrill cat-calls?
  How can one ever sleep at night,
  When the great moon is round and bright?

  Long naps by day, I like that best.
  When the great sun is hot and bright,
  That seems the time to take a rest,
  After a long and strenuous night.
  It would be strange to live by rule,
  As children do who go to school.

Sometimes Sally would go into the room where all the books were, and
Miss Winifred had her writing-desk and her typewriter. Sally would
sit patiently by her mouse-hole and Miss Winifred would sit by her
typewriter with her hands in her lap, for it sometimes seemed to be
as hard to catch ideas as to catch a mouse, and then suddenly Miss
Winifred’s fingers would fly over the keys and the black writing would
come out on the paper. Sally had many ideas herself, in fact she was
never at a loss for them. She wished she could write on the typewriter,
and once, when Miss Winifred had left it uncovered with a sheet of
paper in it, she had walked over the keys, but she could not make it
write. She wanted to write a letter to dear Miss Harvey to tell her how
she loved her. Of course Miss Harvey must know in part how she felt,
for she so often put her paws around her neck and pressed her face
against hers, but a letter could tell more.

So one day when Miss Winifred had left a sheet of typewriting paper on
her desk, Sally skipped onto it. She looked down and saw that the marks
of her paws were plainly to be seen. This was what the footprints said:

  DEAR MISS HARVEY:

  I love you best of all the people in the house. In some ways you
  are dearer than Oxford, although I could not get along without my
  splendid twin brother, but you make me think of my own dear mother,
  for you are so cozy and so kind. Of course she did not look like you,
  for she was just a small cat like myself. I mean you are like her in
  disposition. It is Sally Gray writing this. It is the first letter
  I ever wrote. I just had to thank you for all your kindness. Elvira
  is nice, too, but not as gentle as you are, and Miss Winifred doesn’t
  mean to step on my tail, only you never step on it, not even by
  accident, so some people are more thoughtful than others.

                                     Your own most loving

                                                                   SALLY

She heard Miss Winifred coming and jumped down on the floor. Miss
Winifred took up the sheet of paper and was about to put it into the
typewriter.

‘Don’t,’ Sally pleaded in her thought-transference language. ‘That is
my letter to Miss Harvey, the first I ever wrote.’

But Miss Winifred could not understand. She looked at the paper a
little more closely with her near-sighted eyes.

‘Goodness, you little witch,’ she said, ‘you have walked all over my
sheet.’

Sally saw that she was about to put it into the waste-paper basket.

‘It is my letter,’ Sally repeated in her own language. How she wished
she had human speech! But this time it really seemed as if Miss
Winifred understood, for she called to Miss Harvey, who was setting the
table in the dining-room.

‘Come here a minute and see what Sally has done,’ she said as she held
up the sheet. ‘See Sally’s paw-marks all over the paper. I think she
must have been writing a love-letter to you.’

Sally never knew whether Miss Harvey could read what she had written,
but, after all, it did not make much difference whether or not she
could make out the actual words, for she seemed so pleased to have it.

‘Dear little Sally,’ she said, and she stopped to stroke the pussy in
passing her. ‘So you thought you would write a letter? I must show it
to Elvira.’




[Illustration]

CHAPTER X

MOODS


Sally was a cat with moods. When she was well and busy, she was a happy
kitten, but if there was the least thing wrong with her, she felt very
forlorn. It was at these times that she thought of her dear mother and
lamented her loss, for even dear Miss Harvey, who understood so well
the feelings of a cat, could not quite make up for a furry mother who
would put her paw about her and wash her when she was too tired to do
it for herself. Oxford was not of much use as a sympathizer, and yet
Sally always had the hope that he would be.

So one hot summer day, when Sally felt very unhappy and as if she were
of no use to any one, she spoke to Oxford of her feelings.

‘I feel as if I were a perfectly useless cat,’ she said. ‘You can do so
much for the family.’

The kittens were in the shade of the oak tree near the front door. It
was a delightful spot, for they could have a view of the path, and see
any one who went up or down it. Then, too, if any one came to the door,
like the postman, they could take the chance to slip into the house,
without bothering to go around to the back door.

Oxford made no reply.

Suddenly Sally remembered something she had heard in a sermon that
Elvira was reading out of a newspaper. The preacher had said that the
best way to forget one’s own troubles was to do something for some one
else.

‘Oxford, wouldn’t you like me to wash around your ears?’ she said.

‘Oh, bother, no,’ said Oxford.

‘I feel so blue to-day,’ she said. ‘I thought maybe if I did something
useful like washing your ears I’d feel better.’

‘There’s no use in doing something useful that nobody wants you to do,’
said he.

Sally hoped he would add, ‘My poor little sister, I am so sorry you are
blue,’ but instead of that he said, ‘Sally, you have been eating too
many grasshoppers.’

Sally was pretty sure this was the case, but she had hoped Oxford would
not have thought of it.

‘Grasshoppers are so alluring,’ said Sally. She had picked up this word
from one of Miss Winifred’s callers who was speaking of the moving
pictures. It certainly applied to grasshoppers which were so constantly
on the move.

‘You see,’ Sally went on, ‘they are hard to catch, and if you do catch
a grasshopper, there doesn’t seem any point in letting it go.’

‘You could give them to me,’ said Oxford.

‘But you get more than I do.’

‘Yes, that is true. But they never upset me and make me blue. If they
affected my spirits, I should cut down on grasshoppers.’

Sally knew this would have been the case. She admired her brother’s
strength of character.

Just then Sally saw her friend, Mrs. Conant, going down the path with
some letters to mail. She stopped to speak to the kittens.

‘Well, you do know how to make yourselves comfortable,’ she said as she
passed. She had on one of the pretty pink-and-white dresses that Sally
liked so much, and in her present mood she thought how nice it would be
to be a pretty young lady whom every one loved, with a thin cool dress
on instead of fur.

Although Oxford did not express his affection, he was very fond of
his little sister, and he wanted to help her. But he could not resist
saying, ‘Sally, you ought to learn to brace up.’ He quickly added,
‘Suppose we play with our catnip mice for a change? Maybe the catnip
will brace you up.’

They saw Miss Winifred and a friend coming up the path. This meant a
fine chance to get into the house, so the kittens went up the steps and
stood before the front door.

‘Dear me!’ said Miss Winifred, ‘I wonder how long you have been waiting
here.’ She took out her latch-key and, as she opened the door, the
kittens slipped in ahead of her. They ran along to the door that led
to the kitchen. Miss Winifred followed them and, as it was dark in that
corner, she stooped down to see if the kittens were there. Yes, she
felt two furry backs, they were patiently waiting for her to open the
door.

Once in the kitchen, Oxford gave a leap from a chair to the small shelf
on which the clock stood, for on it were the catnip mice. He knocked
off first one and then the other.

‘Bless your heart,’ said Elvira, as she looked at Sally. ‘You look a
little peaked to-day. Too many grasshoppers, I fear.’

Miss Harvey came into the kitchen just then and Sally got into her lap
and put her two paws around her neck, for she wanted a little petting.
There are times when this is even more comforting than catnip.

‘My poor little Sally,’ said Miss Harvey, as she stroked the pussy. ‘My
poor, dear, little Sally. Did she feel as if she wanted some one to pet
her? I understand, dear, just how you feel.’

Miss Harvey was tactful enough not to refer to the grasshoppers.

Oxford was already playing with his catnip mouse, tossing it high in
the air and running to sniff it where it fell. Suddenly Sally scrambled
down from Miss Harvey’s lap and flew toward Oxford’s mouse, seizing it
before his astonished eyes.

‘Silly kittens,’ said Elvira. ‘There are two mice, you can each have
one,’ and she picked up the other mouse and threw it on the floor. Then
they both ran to get that mouse. Sally had it in her mouth and Oxford
knocked it out.

‘Oh, if that is your game, all right,’ said Elvira, who was an
understanding person.

Sally felt much refreshed after half an hour spent with the catnip
mice, and as usually happened after a time with this stimulating
plaything, she felt like talking in verse instead of prose. Even Oxford
felt like answering back in rhyme. It was a fine game.

  _Sally_:  I’d like to be a lady fair,
              All dressed in silks and fur,
            With rosy lips and golden hair,
              And speech, instead of purr.

            My father’d give me a fur coat,
              And on a summer day,
            When on the waters I could float,
              I’d put my coat away.

            Were I in silk instead of fur,
              How pleasant that would be,
            Pink silk I’d choose, and, Oxford Gray,
              You’d be so proud of me!

  _Oxford_: Pink silk, indeed, you foolish maid,
              Why can’t you be content?
            You’re costumed for both sun and shade,
              Nor does it cost a cent.

            Sally, I’d hate the sight of you,
              I like you as you are,
            A modest kitten, sweet and true,
              With eyes that see afar.

  _Sally_:  Well, Oxford, since I’m dear to you,
              Thankful I ought to be,
            For human brothers oft find fault
              With sisters’ fineree.

            Perhaps the lady in her silk
              And coat of costly fur,
            Would sometimes like my bowl of milk,
              If she could have my purr.

            For cares, they say, must come with wealth,
              And, Oxford, we are free
            To roam the house at night, by stealth,
              With mice for company.

            To sleep all night, when mice are near,
              Would seem a waste of time,
            Than ladies I am surely freer,
              For I can race and climb.

  _Oxford_: Now, Sally, there’s my own good cat,
              A cat of parts and sense,
            Your wits are sharp, I’m sure of that,
              People are often dense.

            Of all the creatures on this earth
              The kitten’s life is best,
            I’ve always known this from my birth,
              I pity all the rest.

            The men I pity very much,
              They cannot watch the ants,
            And grasshoppers, and worms, and such,
              In their accustomed haunts.

            I’d hate to be so very tall,
              A man I would not be,
            It’s easier if you are small,
              To climb a chestnut tree.

            My fur coat is a grand affair,
              It did not cost a cent.
            Were I a man and fur did wear,
              What hundreds would be spent!

            The lesson surely seems to read,
              And it is very plain,
            To make the most of what you are,
              With heart, and paws, and brain.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XI

PETER


Sally and Oxford felt just alike about Peter. They could neither of
them bear him. He was a fine-looking brown tiger cat with large stripes
and a large white shirt-front and four white paws. He had once been
a valued house-cat, but was now without a home. They suspected that
Elvira sometimes gave him meals on their piazza, for they now felt the
back porch belonged to them. When kittens have lived for more than a
year and a half in a place and have grown into young cats, the place
seems to belong to them, so Oxford stalked around as if he were a
police-cat on duty, keeping out intruders.

‘Of course the back yard is mine,’ he said. ‘Indeed, I feel that I own
the place more than Miss Winifred does.’

‘But her father left it to her,’ Sally reminded him.

‘I suppose she has a certain claim to it, but he never knew us,’ said
Oxford. ‘I am sure he would have loved us if he had known us. Don’t
you remember the story that has come down to us, of how he held our
great-grandfather, William Furbush-Tailby, on his knee? Anyway, we get
a great deal more good out of the place than Miss Winifred. I have
never seen her climb a tree, and we can climb one any time and get away
from a dog, and she never goes into the Wild Wood, and she does not
know all our little hiding-places, and she could not get into them,
anyway.’

‘I do feel as if we were more important,’ said Sally. ‘Many a time I’ve
heard Elvira say, “I’ll come to you in a few minutes, Miss Winifred,
but Oxford has just come in. I must give him his supper, for he won’t
understand being kept waiting.”’

But whoever the true owner of the house might be, it certainly did not
belong to Peter, and Oxford had told him so on more than one occasion.
He had chased him off the place several times, but Peter, although he
seemed gentle, was a persistent soul, and as he was fond of the bread
and canned salmon that kind Elvira put out on the back piazza for him,
he came back over and over again.

‘If I ever really get my paw on him, I’ll give him such a thrashing
that he’ll remember it all his life,’ Oxford said to Sally.

Now it just darted through Sally’s mind, that it might be the other way
around, for Peter, although he was mild in his demeanor, was larger
than Oxford, and at least two years older, but being wise beyond her
months, she merely said, ‘It will be grand, Oxford, if you can thrash
him.’

‘Of course I can,’ said her brother, swelling with pride. ‘Don’t you
remember the tradition about the first Furbush, Martha’s ancestor, how
he would get the better of every cat in a fight and earned the name of
William the Conqueror?’

‘Yes,’ said Sally, ‘I remember, but he was a full-grown cat.’

‘I don’t expect to get hurt, and it is certainly best to get rid of
that vagabond at once, before Elvira gets fond of him.’

The fight came off one bright November day. Sally was looking out of
the kitchen window, and Oxford was sunning himself in the back yard.
There was a plate of canned salmon mixed with bread on the back piazza.
That could not be for Oxford, for both he and she had grown so dainty
that they liked stew meat and haddock better than canned salmon. Elvira
must be leaving it out there for some cat. She saw Peter coming through
a place in the fence that was made for small animals to get through.
She hoped to attract Oxford’s attention and ran around to the kitchen
door, but it was closed. Jumping up on the window-sill again, she saw
Peter quickly run up the steps and begin to taste the food. Oxford
flew up the steps and began to fight Peter. He flew at Oxford and put
his claws in his fur. Oxford grappled with him, and the two cats went
rolling down the steps.

Sally, from her perch on the window-sill, saw that it was as she had
feared. After a long fight, Peter went swiftly away in fine condition,
while Oxford came haltingly up the steps with a lame paw--a sadder and
a wiser cat. Although he respected Peter more, his dislike of him
increased, and he was determined to drive him off the place.

‘If I had advised him not to fight, he wouldn’t have liked it,’ thought
Sally. ‘He would have just said, “Sally, you never do brace up.”’

After this, Oxford and Sally saw no more of Peter for some weeks.
Sometimes they saw a plate of canned salmon and bread on the back
piazza and lay in wait for him, but Oxford never caught him. Twice they
saw at dusk a shadowy form vanishing into the Wild Wood.

One evening there was a great snowstorm and Oxford had not come home.
Miss Winifred seemed the most worried, and this was strange, as she had
not wanted him in the beginning.

‘Poor little pussy, hasn’t he come back yet?’ she asked Elvira after
supper.

‘No, Miss Winifred, and I’ve called until I’m hoarse.’

‘It is a wild storm,’ said Miss Winifred.

‘I am sure Oxford is safe and warm somewhere,’ said Elvira; ‘he’s a cat
who knows how to look out for himself.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Harvey, ‘if it was my little Sally, I should be
terribly worried.’

Sally was sitting on Miss Harvey’s knee at the time, and at these words
she put her furry paws around her neck and rubbed her face against
hers. ‘I am sure he is all right,’ she said in her cat language that
people could not understand. ‘He always comes back.’

‘Of course he always has come back,’ said Miss Winifred, as if she had
understood, ‘but there comes a time--some of your pets have gone away
and never come back, Elvira.’

Then Sally thought of her grandmother and of her brave father, the
mighty hunter, and of her mother, so cozy and so kind. How terrible it
would be if Oxford should disappear as they had done!

‘I will go and call him,’ said Miss Winifred. ‘Maybe he will come in
for me.’

‘For you?’ said Elvira. ‘You and he have never been great friends.’

Miss Winifred went to the front door and stepped into the piazza that
was glassed in for winter. The storm was raging outside. She opened the
glass door of the piazza and the wind blew the snow into her face. It
was deep on the steps.

‘Oxford Gray, Oxford Gray, Oxford Gray, Junior!’ she called. ‘Darling
pussy, do come!’

She had never called him ‘darling pussy’ before, but our friends grow
very dear to us if we fear losing them.

‘Oxford, Oxford Gray, Junior!’ she called again.

Something furry brushed against her feet. She stooped and patted the
fur coat all crusted over with snow.

‘How friendly you are! You were never so friendly before. Walk in,
darling pussy,’ she said, as she opened the hall door.

The hungry and cold cat rubbed against her feet once more as if in
gratitude. She walked along the front hall to the door at the back that
led into the kitchen.

‘Here he is! Here is Oxford Gray, Junior, himself,’ she said. ‘He came
for me. He knew my voice.’

Elvira was greatly surprised. ‘He just happened to come along at that
time,’ she said; then, as she started to brush the casing of snow from
the cat, she said, ‘This isn’t Oxford Gray, Junior. This is Peter.’

‘Peter!’ gasped Miss Winifred. ‘Who on earth is Peter?’

‘Somebody’s house-cat; somebody’s pet that has been left to make his
own way in the world.’

‘How did he happen to come here? Is he one of your friends who takes
his meals at your cafeteria on the piazza?’

‘He’s had a few meals,’ Elvira admitted. ‘And he will have as many more
as he likes. I’d rather spend my money feeding cats than going to the
movies. It’s more amusing to me.’

‘Of course we must keep him for the night,’ said Miss Winifred, ‘and he
must have a good meal, but I really can’t keep him permanently, Elvira;
two cats are quite enough.’

‘Oxford agrees with you,’ said Elvira. ‘You’ll have no trouble once he
gets home.’

The next morning the sun shone, and Oxford came back as unconcernedly
as if he had caused no anxiety. No one knew his adventures except
Sally, but he looked so prosperous and seemed so little to desire food
that the family were sure he had been housed somewhere.

As he went out for a stroll later in the morning, he met Peter coming
out of the cellar door.

‘What have you been doing in my house?’ he demanded sternly.

For once the silent Peter found his tongue. ‘It is my house now,’ he
said proudly. ‘Miss Winifred asked me in herself.’

‘She didn’t!’ Oxford exclaimed.

‘She did! She said, “Walk in, darling pussy,” so I walked in.’




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XII

SALLY AND THE LOUD SPEAKER


Sally spent a great deal of time in the parlor. In the morning she
often had it to herself, for Miss Winifred was usually out of the
house, or writing on her typewriter. ‘The parlor is mine in the
morning,’ she told Oxford.

‘You can go into your old parlor all you like,’ said he. ‘I like my
kitchen best.’

Sally suspected that his scorn of the parlor came because he was not
allowed to go into it, as he was not as quiet and well-behaved as Sally.

In the evening Miss Harvey often sat there reading the newspaper to
Miss Winifred. Sally was often bored by the newspaper, and she would
get up in Miss Harvey’s lap and sit on it so that she could not read.
Miss Harvey would say in her gentle voice, ‘Come, Sally, please get off
my paper.’

Sally would pretend that she did not understand, and she would put her
furry paws around Miss Harvey’s neck and press her furry face against
her cheek.

‘Sally, you are a nuisance,’ were the unkindest words Miss Harvey
ever said, and Sally would once more pretend she did not understand.
Sometimes Miss Harvey would stop reading if it was almost bedtime;
Sally always hoped this would happen, and sometimes she would gently
put Sally on the center table, where she would settle for a nap in the
friendly warmth of the electric lamp.

Once in a great while there would be an interesting piece of news in
the paper. Once she heard something about the President’s pets, and
there was a wonderful occasion when there was something worth while
in the paper and Sally learned that the President’s wife was fond of
pets, and that once, before she was in the White House, she had found
a mouse-hole in the room she was in, in some hotel, and had trained
the mice and given them food. Sally’s eyes fairly glistened. What a
pity that she had not been near that mouse-hole herself! It would have
been so easy to catch a tame mouse, and if she caught one, Oxford could
never be so scornful again.

Sometimes Miss Harvey would put down the paper and she and Miss
Winifred would have a friendly chat, and it was at one of these times
that Sally learned the piece of news she told Oxford the next day as
she and Oxford were sunning themselves on the back porch after an
exhausting morning of exercise.

‘I hear that Miss Winifred is going to have a loud speaker,’ she said.

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said he; ‘there are enough loud speakers
around the house as it is. I have sensitive ears.’

‘Miss Harvey has a sweet voice,’ said Sally, ‘only every one has to
talk louder to Miss Winifred, and I suppose she wants some one to talk
to her when the others are busy.’

‘You would do very well for that job,’ said Oxford; ‘for a small cat I
never heard such a rasping, powerful voice.’

‘Yes, Miss Winifred always hears me,’ said Sally.

‘I have a very gentlemanly mew,’ said Oxford; ‘any one would know I had
Furbush-Tailby blood just to hear my mew. But, to hear you and not see
you, Sally, no one would suspect for a moment that you were a lady.’

‘They’d know it if they saw me,’ said Sally. ‘Miss Harvey often says I
am a perfect little lady.’

‘I wonder if the loud speaker will be a man or a woman,’ Oxford said.

Sally wondered, too, and whenever she was in the parlor and any one
called, she listened to the voice of the caller with great interest.

One afternoon a gentleman called with a strong, loud voice. He called
Miss Mann ‘Cousin Winifred.’ Sally was sure he was the loud speaker and
that he had come to stay.

After some conversation that did not interest Sally, he fixed his eyes
on her as she sat in the corner on her register and he said, ‘You have
a cat, I see.’

‘She isn’t exactly mine,’ said Miss Winifred, ‘but she does me the
honor to live in my house; she has a brother who lives here also, and
there is another cat, Peter, who thinks he lives with us because he
takes all his meals here and sleeps here on cold, stormy nights, but
Oxford Gray, Junior, is certain he does not and drives him away.’

At last the conversation was becoming interesting. Sally wondered what
the loud speaker would say. She had an idea by the way he had looked at
herself that he did not realize the importance of cats.

‘I went to call on two ladies the other day,’ he said, ‘who were
longing to go back to the State of Washington where they used to live,
but they said they could not go because the journey would be too much
for their cat, who was old and settled in his ways.’

Sally wished she knew the ladies. They understood something of life and
saw things in their right proportion.

‘I suggested to them that they could give their cat away, or send him
to the Animal Rescue League,’ the loud speaker went on.

Sally became alarmed. If this were, indeed, the loud speaker, and he
came here to live, what chance was there for Oxford and herself? Would
he not make a clean sweep of all who wore fur coats? She was relieved
to find by Miss Winifred’s next question that he had a wife and several
children. He surely could not be leaving them to come and live here
just to talk to Miss Winifred. Presently he took his hat and went to
the door, shaking hands with Miss Winifred, and saying it had been good
to see her, and never giving one glance in Sally’s direction.

‘It was rude of him,’ Sally said to herself, ‘when I am a perfect lady.
It never does any harm to be polite.’

A few days later, something that had a strange appearance was on the
piano. Sally found it there one afternoon. It looked like a very small
bureau with knobs in odd places, and two things that looked like
clocks. Sally wondered what it could be. There was a small round table
close by the piano, and on this was standing a long black thing, shaped
something like a huge calla lily.

The next afternoon, when Sally was upstairs, she heard a concert going
on in the parlor. There were several shrill voices and it sounded very
much like the concerts Sally’s cat friends sometimes gave. But these
took place at night. Sally was of a curious nature, and she hurried
down to see what was going on. To her surprise when she reached the
parlor not a soul was to be seen except Miss Winifred. Sally had never
heard her sing, and the sound seemed to be coming out of the black
calla lily, for the piano was shut. Presently Miss Winifred touched
one of the knobs and the music came to an end. Sally was more and more
mystified. Then Miss Winifred touched a knob and Sally heard a man say,
‘This is the friendly voice of Boston.’ Sally agreed that Boston had a
nice voice, but he was nowhere to be seen. She looked around the room,
but could see no one. She went under the piano, thinking Boston might
be there. Some one was giving a talk about grapefruit juice. Sally did
not care about the talk, for she liked milk for her drink. Finally she
got up on the table on which the big black calla lily stood and looked
down into it. The voice sounded so loud, Sally was frightened. She
skipped down and ran out into the kitchen to tell Oxford about it.

‘There’s a man that’s only got a voice and no body, and he lives in the
black thing on the table, and his name is Boston,’ she told him. ‘And
sometimes he sings.’

‘That’s the radio,’ said Oxford. ‘I heard Miss Harvey talking to Elvira
about it. They have them in all the houses now. Even Peter knows about
them.’

‘You didn’t know anything about it the other day,’ Sally ventured.

‘It is a long time since the other day,’ said Oxford, ‘and since then
I have given my entire spare time to research. I have tried hard to
learn all I could about the loud speakers and radios. Mr. Gardiner has
one and I heard him talking to Miss Harvey. If one has masculine brains
and sharp ears, there is no end to what one can learn. Sally, you are
behind the times.’




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIII

SALLY BRACES UP


Now that Sally was used to the radio, she took a good deal of pleasure
in it, in fact on very cold days she enjoyed it more than Miss Winifred
did, for the parlor was a large room and the piano, where the radio
stood, was between two long glass doors that let in a good deal of air
through the cracks in winter weather. Sally, with her sharp ears, could
hear every word the loud speaker said when she sat on her register
in the opposite corner of the room. Sally knew that it was her own
register, for there was another in the room. This one in the corner
was often closed, so that Sally could lie there at her ease and feel
just a pleasant warmth. Miss Winifred, who did not have a fur coat like
Sally, had to walk up near the loud speaker and she was cold in that
corner even with a sweater on. Yes, there were many advantages in being
a cat, Sally thought. It was fine to have perfect sight and not to have
to wear eye-glasses and to be so small you could lie on a register,
and hear every word the loud speaker said. But people had no choice;
perhaps many of them like herself would prefer to be cats.

This New Year’s Eve she was especially interested in the sermon Miss
Winifred was hearing. It seemed made on purpose for cats, for it
spoke of the grace and gayety of a young kitten chasing its tail.
Sally pricked up her ears at this. She liked the minister, whoever he
might be. He understood something about life. He went on to say how
sympathy should be given to all young things. There was a part Sally
did not quite understand, and then she was struck by these words: ‘The
beginning of the New Year is a good time to make resolutions, but every
day is the beginning of a new year, we do not have to wait.’ Sally was
glad of this, for a year was so very long to a cat. However, as there
was to be a year beginning, it seemed a good time to make resolutions.
She talked the matter over with Oxford afterward.

‘One of your resolutions, I should say, ought to be to brace up,’ said
he.

‘Yes,’ said Sally meekly, ‘that is one.’

‘I should think,’ he added, somewhat scornfully, ‘that it was about
time you caught a mouse.’

‘Yes, that is another of my resolutions,’ said she.

‘I have a few in mind,’ said Oxford. ‘I mean to give Peter the biggest
thrashing he has ever had.’

‘And I surely will catch a mouse sometime, I promise you I will,’ said
Sally.

‘I don’t think it at all probable,’ he said dryly. ‘You’ll have to
learn to brace up first.’

It was springtime before the great event occurred. Every day in the new
year Sally had remembered the words of the preacher. She said them over
and over to herself every morning, ‘Each day is the beginning of a new
year,’ and every morning she had said to herself, ‘I will try to catch
a mouse before the day is over.’

Sally thought there were other things in life that were as important
as bracing up. Was not patience equally commendable? And how about
unselfishness? Would Oxford ever have the patience to sit for hours at
a mouse-hole? Would he ever let her take a part of his food? But Oxford
was a wonderful cat, a dream to look at compared with her, with his
pink nose and his expansive white shirt-front. She had a tiger face and
small white shirt-front, and even if patience and perseverance were
rewarded at last and she caught her mouse, she could never be a mighty
hunter. But he, with his rough ways, was never allowed in the parlor
and she was. After all, life had its compensations.

All the same, Sally longed to catch a mouse.

The exciting event took place when Miss Winifred and Elvira had gone
on their usual spring visit to New Hampshire. And it did not happen
at all as Sally thought it would. It was early in the morning. Miss
Harvey, Sally, and Oxford were alone in the house. Miss Harvey had made
the kitchen fire, and put the tea-kettle on the stove. Oxford was just
waking up and stretching himself. Sally, who was wide awake, saw a
mouse glide past her on the freshly scrubbed kitchen floor. She darted
forward and seized the mouse. She had it firmly in her mouth. It was
still alive, but she knew it could not escape. Oxford roused himself.
Sally looked at him with triumph in her eyes. ‘See what I have caught.
Didn’t I tell you I would catch a mouse?’ she seemed to say.

[Illustration]

Oxford dashed forward angrily and knocked the mouse out of Sally’s
mouth. Sally had never been so angry in her life. Miss Harvey, hearing
the commotion, turned just before Oxford had reached Sally. She saw
what happened. The mouse was flying along the kitchen floor toward the
outside door. Miss Harvey thought it most provoking of Oxford.

‘Poor dear,’ she said to Sally, ‘it was your mouse.’

Sally was glad some one understood.

Miss Harvey opened the kitchen door that led into the passageway and
then the outside door. Her sympathies were divided between Sally and
the mouse. Poor tiny creature! It looked so frightened, and, after all,
it probably enjoyed its life as much as Sally liked hers. But if that
wretched Oxford got the mouse, Miss Harvey felt there was no justice
to be looked for in this world. When she opened the door, she saw the
mouse scurrying down the steps, and Sally and Oxford following after
each other, tumbling down the steps in hot pursuit. It was as exciting
as any race she had ever seen. Sally for once lost her temper as the
mouse disappeared from view. She did not say all she thought. She said
only a part of it, but Oxford was so astonished by what she did say
that she seemed a different Sally in his eyes.

After she had spoken her vehement words, she returned to the house.
Oxford felt taken down for the moment, but he soon rose to the occasion.

‘It was a sort of an accident your catching that mouse,’ he said.
‘Anybody can catch a mouse if it goes just where they are.’

Sally was already beginning to cool down.

‘Not everybody,’ she said. ‘Miss Harvey has told me more than once that
she never caught a mouse in her life.’




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIV

SALLY AND SPOT


‘The Conants have got a dog,’ Sally said to Oxford one day. ‘Isn’t that
awful?’

‘Are you sure they’ve got one?’

‘Yes, I heard Miss Harvey say so, and I’ve seen him.’

‘You’ve seen him?’

‘Yes, he was skipping about in our clothes-yard this morning. Miss
Harvey wouldn’t let me out. She said it was too dangerous. I was afraid
you’d meet him.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘Miss Harvey told Elvira he was a wire-haired terrier. He’s white with
a black spot. He’s not so terribly big, but it seems he hates cats and
loves to chase them. Miss Harvey thinks he would kill us if he got the
chance.’

‘I’m quite sure he wouldn’t kill me,’ said Oxford.

‘I don’t suppose he would, but he might kill me.’

‘Not if I am around, Sally. You had better never go out without me.’

Oxford and Sally were sitting in the kitchen windows as they were
talking, and they could look across at the windows in the Conant house.
Suddenly Sally gave a hiss.

‘What is the matter?’ asked Elvira.

‘He’s there; it’s himself,’ said Sally, but Elvira could not understand.

Oxford understood, and he looked across at the Conant house. There, in
one of the windows, was the monster who would like to kill cats.

He was not so terrible to look at. The cats gazed at him fascinated. He
looked back at them with a fixed gaze.

Elvira heard some more hisses and going to the window she saw Spot.

‘Bless your hearts, he can’t get you,’ said Elvira. ‘There are two sets
of window-panes between you and Spot.’

It gave a new thrill to life having Spot living next door, but it was
most inconvenient, for Oxford and Sally were always kept in when Spot
was taking his exercise.

‘He doesn’t seem to realize this place is ours,’ said Oxford. ‘He walks
into this clothes-yard, just as bold as if it belonged to him.’

‘But there is no fence between the two places,’ said Sally. ‘We go into
Mrs. Conant’s garden whenever we like.’

‘We are old settlers,’ said Oxford. ‘We have a right to go where we
please, but I call it bold for an impudent young puppy to come over
into our yard. Before we know it, he will be in the Wild Wood.’

He had an endless fascination for them, however. They liked to watch
him starting out at an early hour in the morning for an airing with
Mrs. Conant’s husband. They trembled and felt safer when he went back
to the house and the door closed.

Elvira would say, ‘I think it is safe for Oxford and Sally to go out
now. It will be some time before Spot goes out again.’

They never felt much security when they were out, for at any moment the
door of the Conant house might open and the monster might come out.

‘Anyway, he can’t climb trees,’ said Oxford, ‘and there are a lot of
them about.’

As the days passed and nothing happened, they grew less and less afraid
of their enemy and more and more confident, and there was always the
excitement of sitting at the kitchen windows and looking across at Spot
as he sat at his window. Sometimes they saw Mrs. Conant pass the window
with Spot frisking along by her side. She would wave her hand as she
passed. It was the season of the year when her pretty pink dress seemed
to Sally more suitable to the weather than her own coat of fur.

Sally felt sure that some day there would be a meeting between herself
and Spot. She did not know why she felt so sure of this. When she spoke
of her fears to Oxford, he said: ‘How silly you are, Sally. All you
have to do is to stay close by me, and I will defend you with my good
right paw.’

‘I am sure you would,’ said Sally, ‘but sometimes you go off on
journeys. I can’t stay shut up in the house all day when you go on a
journey.’

‘Of course, I can’t give up all my pleasure trips to stay at home and
protect you. The only safe thing is never to go out unless you see that
impudent scoundrel’s face in the window. When he’s in, he can’t be out.’

‘But he might suddenly be let out,’ said Sally.

And this was exactly what did happen one bright day in early June when
Oxford was away for a day or two.

Sally saw Spot in the window and she mewed to be let out. She mewed and
mewed until even Miss Winifred heard. The others were at the top of the
house. They could hear her, but it was a long way to come down just for
Sally.

‘Poor pussy,’ said Miss Winifred, as she opened the kitchen door. ‘What
do you want?’

Sally mewed again in her strong voice and went to the outside door.

‘Do you want to go out?’ said Miss Winifred, as she opened the screen
door.

Sally made it evident that she did. She ran down the steps to the
clothes-yard. It was good to get out into the bright sunshine, and
she ran down toward the street. Suddenly she heard an awful bark and
looking up she saw that the monster was almost upon her. Trembling all
over, Sally fairly flew over the ground and scampered up the nearest
tree. There she sat looking down on Spot. He was standing still at the
foot of the tree looking up at her. Some time passed, and finally Sally
gathered courage to ask,

‘How long are you going to stay there?’

‘Until you come down,’ said Spot.

‘I mean to stay here a long time,’ said Sally. ‘Days, perhaps. It is
very comfortable in this tree.’

‘Is it? It doesn’t look so.’

Time passed. It seemed hours to Sally. The round sun was getting low in
the heavens, and still that awful dog stood there at the foot of the
tree. Sally did not dare to come down.

‘I’ve often seen you in the window,’ said Sally pleasantly. ‘I should
think you would want to go back to that nice window; it seems a little
cold here.’

[Illustration]

‘I’ve often noticed you at your window,’ said Spot. ‘I was thinking it
was about time for you to go home.’

‘I mean to stay out all night,’ said Sally. ‘I never was out all night.
My friends give fine concerts then. There is to be a moon to-night.’

Time passed, and Sally was growing hungry and tired. Would no one come
for her? Miss Harvey and Elvira would not know she had been let out,
and she had heard them say that Miss Winifred was going off for the
night. Poor Sally was getting more and more miserable.

‘Don’t you think Mrs. Conant will worry if you stay out so long?’ she
asked.

‘She never worries. She lets me lead a free life. How about Elvira and
Miss Harvey? What will they think if you don’t come in?’

‘They don’t know I’m out.’

The sky was clouding over and the bright sun was going to set long
before its time in a bank of gray.

‘It is going to rain,’ said Sally. ‘I don’t mind the rain at all
because of my warm fur coat.’ All the same, she didn’t like to get wet.
‘Do you mind the rain, Spot?’

‘No, but it isn’t going to rain,’ he said.

Sally was now longing to get into the house. She gave another of her
piercing mews which she had been giving at intervals, but she was some
distance from the house and Elvira did not know that she was out.

[Illustration]

‘Some cat is in trouble. It sounds a little like Sally’s mew,’ Elvira
said to Miss Harvey. ‘Did you let her out?’

‘No, I am sure she is somewhere around the house.’

Presently, to Sally’s joy, she saw Mrs. Conant coming along the avenue.

‘Why, Spotty, what are you doing here?’ she asked.

She looked up to see what the dog was watching, and she saw poor Sally
in the tree.

‘Come, Spotty, come home at once and let that poor cat alone,’ she said.

As she passed the kitchen window she said: ‘One of your cats has been
treed by Spotty. I am very sorry. He ought to have better manners.’

‘She is the nicest person,’ Sally said to herself as she scrambled
down the tree after she heard the front door close on Mrs. Conant and
her dog. ‘She understands the feelings of a cat, but it is strange
she could not tell the difference between Oxford and me. Perhaps I’m
growing better-looking now I am fatter.’




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XV

THE FAMILY TREE


It seemed strange to Sally that as nice a person as Mrs. Conant should
care as much as she did for a creature like Spot. It was all she could
do to listen in silence to a conversation that she had with Miss
Winifred one afternoon in the parlor. The two were sitting on the sofa
while Sally was looking out of the window.

She was watching some birds that were taking a bath in the bird bath.
First a blue jay went in and splashed about, and after he came out, a
robin fluttered down from his perch in a tree.

‘Spot has a good pedigree,’ said Mrs. Conant. ‘His Family Tree is quite
as good in its way as Mr. Conant’s.’

Sally listened while the two ladies talked of these matters, and she
thought of her glorious ancestors. She wished she had a Family Tree
herself, but later, when she talked the matter over with Oxford, he
said it was nonsense.

‘Let us play with our catnip mice,’ he said.

As usual they had a fine time and Sally was so stimulated that she felt
like talking in verse.

  I long to have a family tree
    And show to all my true descent,
  But Oxford says a family tree
    Is not a tree for kittens meant.
  To know his father is enough,
    For he was made of valiant stuff.

  But I would like to trace them all,
    Back to proud William of great fame,
  Who lived, they say, in princely hall,
    And bore almost a royal name,
  Down to myself, then, all would say,
    ‘She’s royal, though she’s small and gray.’

  There were great singers in my race,
    Who sat upon the garden wall,
  Tenors, sopranos, and a bass,
    Who nightly concerts gave to all,
  And mighty hunters were the rule
    But Oxford thinks me such a fool.

  He says his mind he will not vex
    About such matters, that it’s base,
  But I am of the other sex
    And I delight in pride of race,
  But Oxford only says, says he,
    Strong paws are more than ancestry.

  To catch a mouse is better far
    Than grandfathers of high degree,
  He loved his friendly grandmamma,
    And nothing but a waif was she.
  The day is bright, some tree we’ll climb,
    To stay indoors would be a crime.

  I know if I have children fair,
    Some little kittens good to see,
  Furry and bright, a lusty pair,
    I’d like to have a family tree.
  But Oxford said, ‘Let’s have some fun,
    The door is open, let us run.’

  So to the woods we gayly went
    And there we had a lively race,
  And such a joyous hour we spent
    Chasing each other round the place.
  ‘If you must have a family tree,
    I’ll find one in the woods,’ said he.

Sally was sent up a tree by Spot more than once, and even Oxford had
to fly from him several times, for to stay indoors in the lovely
summer weather was altogether impossible. There came to be a certain
excitement in escaping from their enemy which gave a dash of spice to
their life. And there was one day they would never forget when Spot met
the two of them in the Wild Wood. Oxford had promised to defend Sally,
but all the same, she thought it wiser to scamper up the nearest tree,
for it might happen that her brave brother would get the worst of the
fight. Oxford looked about him to see where Sally was and, finding she
was safe, he thought it better to join her and not to fight Spot, for
Sally would be happier if he were in the tree, too. So the pair sat
there looking down with scorn on their enemy.

‘Who are you, anyway?’ Oxford asked. ‘You low creature not able to
climb like us!’

‘I come of a very fine stock. My mistress looked up my pedigree before
she bought me. It is written on paper.’

‘I thought you seemed like a thing that had been bought with money,’
said Oxford. ‘My sister and I are free, not slaves. No money could buy
us. We could leave our home to-morrow if we liked.’

‘Perhaps you could to-morrow,’ Spot called back. ‘But you don’t seem to
be able to leave now. Not while I am at the foot of this tree.’

Now, only a few days before, Oxford had been scorning musty records,
but to Sally’s surprise he said: ‘If my sister and I chose to take
the trouble, we could have a family tree with an ancestry that would
absolutely astonish you, Spot. We go back to a cat who was named
William the Conqueror, because he always knocked his enemy flat. He
was the first Furbush--I mean we can trace back no farther; of course,
there were others back of him.’

‘Well,’ said Spot, ‘I am sure my ancestors were all so great that every
one was a conqueror, and as for my master, he was one of the first
settlers--his ancestors were, I mean.’

‘That is nothing,’ said Oxford. ‘Miss Winifred is descended from one of
the kings of France.’

‘Indeed!’ said Spot. ‘One wouldn’t think it to look at her.’

‘Not that I care a great deal about such things myself,’ said Oxford.

‘I shouldn’t suppose you would,’ said Spot, ‘for I have heard that your
mother’s mother was just a little waif without home or family.’

This was too much for Oxford. He started to scramble down the tree, and
Sally was afraid that Spot would fly at him and perhaps kill him.

‘Oxford,’ she said, ‘is that a bird’s nest on that upper bough?’

Oxford paused in his descent to look up.

‘I don’t see anything. Where is it?’

‘I saw something very like a bird’s nest,’ she said.

Oxford forgot all about his grandmother in his interest in the nest,
which might be full of young birds.

‘Dogs are very superior to cats,’ Spot was saying. ‘Every one says so.
It is a well-known fact.’

‘Who says so?’ Oxford asked.

‘My master and my mistress, and all the dogs I know.’

‘The people who make their home with us greatly prefer cats, and every
cat I have ever met says cats are much brighter than dogs,’ said Oxford.

‘Prove it,’ Spot said with a loud bark.

‘Can you climb a tree?’ Sally asked.

‘I am so superior that I do not have to climb trees,’ said Spot.

‘Can you catch a mouse?’ Oxford inquired.

‘I don’t care about mice. I can be a true companion for man. Men don’t
climb trees, at least not as a rule, and they can’t catch mice. And
dogs are unselfish. I have heard of many a dog losing his life to save
his master, or dying of grief because his master has died.’

Oxford and Sally were considerably impressed. For once Oxford was at a
loss as to what to reply, but Sally was thinking things out.

‘I would do a great deal for Miss Harvey,’ she said. ‘Maybe some day
I’ll have a chance to save her life, but what good does it ever do to
die of grief if one loses a friend? It seems to me wiser just to be a
good friend to all the friends one has left than to die of grief.’

Sally was astonished at her own words, but she had learned this from
Oxford. And just then who should come along the avenue that led to the
two houses but Mrs. Conant with her husband in their automobile.

‘Spotty, what are you doing here? I didn’t mean you to get out until we
came back,’ said Mrs. Conant. ‘John, you had better get out and take
Spot back with you, and I’ll go on to the house. Spot has treed two
cats.’

As Spot walked off unwillingly with his master, he flung back these
words, ‘I’ll ask Mrs. Conant my exact pedigree and I’ll tell it to you
the next time we meet.’

‘We don’t have to take that trouble,’ Oxford retorted; ‘our family tree
is complete in our heads, beginning with William the Conqueror and
coming down to Martha Furbush-Tailby, our great-great-grandmother, and
then to William Furbush-Tailby, the poet, and then to his daughter, who
married our grandfather Oxford Forepaw Gray; his son was my father,
Oxford Gray, and I am Oxford Gray, Junior.’

‘I know who you are, you are a no-account bragging cat,’ said Spot, as
he vanished into the house.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVI

THE TRAVELING CAT


One day Sally looked out of the screen door and she saw a new cat
looking in at the window. He had a glossy coat of long black fur, and
a white shirt-front and four white paws. At least they once had been
white, but they were dirt-color from much traveling. Sally looked at
the cat and the cat looked at Sally.

He asked Sally if he could get a meal at the house. Sally was about
to say she would speak to Elvira, for she could always attract her
attention by mewing or clawing her gown, when Oxford came to the screen
door.

‘You can’t. This is my house. Clear out, and don’t show your black coat
around here again!’

The black cat was very much offended. ‘I am an important person,’ he
hissed back. ‘I’m a great traveler. I’ve come all the way from Malden,
and I’ve been at the wharves in Boston and taken one or two sea
voyages.’

‘You’d better take a few more,’ said Oxford. ‘You are not wanted here.’

And yet he was considerably impressed. Sally liked the appearance of
the stranger, and yet she was a little afraid of him.

‘My name is Captain Ebony Black,’ said the traveling cat. ‘I’m called
Eben by my friends. I’d like to fight you some day when we meet
out-of-doors,’ he added as he looked at Oxford.

‘Just what I should like,’ said Oxford. ‘I always fight all the cats
who come into my grounds.’

‘Do you own the whole place?’ the traveling cat asked. ‘I thought this
was where Peter lived.’

‘He thinks he lives here,’ Oxford snarled, ‘but the place belongs to
me.’

‘And to me, too,’ put in Sally.

‘I let her live here,’ Oxford said, ‘because she is my sister.’

Elvira, who was washing dishes, turned to see what was happening, for
although she could not understand their language, she could tell that
some sort of a row was going on. The cats were looking at each other
fiercely, one on one side of the screen and one on the other.

‘Come, Oxford, be a good cat,’ she said; ‘here is some supper for you.’

Supper, indeed! When one was longing to fight an enemy! He made a few
more angry remarks to the visitor, and ended by calling him ‘Blackie,’
which was hard for Captain Ebony Black to bear, for he came of an old
family.

‘Who are you, anyway?’ he growled.

‘My great-grandfather was a Furbush,’ said Oxford, ‘and he was
descended from a Furbush, who was called “William the Conqueror.”’

‘I am descended from the first Ebony Black who came to this country.
There’s been an Ebony Black in each generation.’

Sally was greatly impressed, for ancestors meant so much to her.

‘Come and eat your supper like a good cat,’ said Elvira, and then,
thinking that the stranger might be hungry, she took a plate of canned
salmon and bread out to the back porch.

‘Elvira is feeding our enemy,’ said Oxford.

He seemed a fine-looking pussy to Sally, but she said nothing.

‘The way in which all the cats in the neighborhood come into my place
is outrageous!’ said Oxford, as he began to eat his fish.

‘After all,’ Sally reminded him, ‘the place is Miss Winifred’s and
Elvira’s, and if they don’t mind----’

‘I’ve explained to you a great many times, Sally, that the true owner
of a place is the one who uses it the most, and so I say the back yard
and the Wild Wood are mine.’

‘Then the parlor is certainly mine,’ said Sally, ‘for I am there much
more than Miss Winifred.’

‘You can call the parlor yours, or can own the house if you like, but
the land is mine.’

The traveling cat thoroughly enjoyed his meal. He was shy with
strangers and had no idea of coming into the house, but he had taken a
liking to Sally’s modest appearance. She looked as if she might be an
old-fashioned cat, with whom one could have a pleasant talk if Oxford
was not around. So he hung about the place, occasionally coming for a
meal on the back porch. And one day he met Sally in the Wild Wood and
they had a friendly chat, for Oxford was not there.

‘I don’t mean any harm,’ said the traveling cat, ‘and I don’t think
your brother need be so rude.’

‘He’s the kindest brother,’ Sally said, ‘but he had such a hard time
winning his way in the world when he was young that, when he did at
last find a home for himself and me, he wants to hold on to it.’

‘I don’t care about a home for long at a time,’ said the traveling cat.
‘I like to take a voyage every now and then in a ship. It doesn’t cost
anything, for I just walk on board, and I don’t have to bother about a
passport, and I can always make myself useful by hunting rats and mice.’

‘It must be exciting to travel,’ Sally said. ‘But I am so home-loving I
like to stay just where I’ve lived for so long.’

She told Oxford some of the tales of his travels that Ebony Black had
told her. Oxford said the fellow was too fond of bragging, but the
dazzling visions of distant spots began to have their effect.

‘Why don’t you drive him off the place, Sally?’ he asked. ‘I will if I
ever find him here.’

‘I suppose he has as much a right to be here as Peter,’ said Sally.
‘There’s room for everybody, Elvira said so.’

‘Oh, Elvira! She would have all the stray cats and dogs in town here if
she had her way. That fellow thinks Ebony Black is a name to be proud
of,’ Oxford went on. ‘I never heard of the family in my life.’

Sally was sorry she had spoken of Ebony Black, but she had been so
impressed by his tales that she wanted to share them with Oxford.

‘The way Elvira treats that fellow to canned salmon is too much!’ said
Oxford.

‘But she isn’t taking anything from us, for we don’t like canned
salmon,’ said Sally.

‘She’ll spend all her money if she doesn’t look out,’ said Oxford, ‘and
then she can’t get haddock for us.’

‘I am sure Elvira has lots of money,’ said Sally.

‘Well, anyway, I don’t propose to have her feeding every cat in town,’
said Oxford.

‘Captain Ebony Black belongs in Malden,’ said Sally. ‘That is, when he
isn’t traveling. He’ll be leaving soon.’

‘He’ll be leaving this very day if I run across him,’ said Oxford.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVII

OXFORD GOES ON A JOURNEY


Now that the autumn had come, Oxford was seized with a desire to
travel. He had been considerably impressed by the tales the traveling
cat had told Sally, although he had not let her see this. And then
there was Peter. He was but a poor creature, to be sure, but the tales
he told of the free life in the open appealed to Oxford.

‘I am going on a journey,’ he said to Sally one morning.

‘Oh, Oxford, aren’t you happy here with me? What more do you want?’

‘I am tired of this back yard and of the Wild Wood. It all seems too
cramped to me. I want some good hunting, such as that tiresome,
no-account Peter has had.’

[Illustration]

‘What could be better than the hunting is here?’ Sally asked. ‘Haven’t
you caught your ninth mouse this season? And you got a robin the other
day.’

‘Yes, and there was an awful row about it. I never saw Elvira in such a
state.’

‘I don’t quite see why,’ said Sally. ‘Elvira eats turkeys and chickens.
Why can’t we eat robins?’

‘That is a different matter. They have their own laws.’

‘Do explain it to me,’ said Sally.

‘You could never understand it,’ said her brother.

Sally suspected that he could not understand it either, but being wise
beyond her years, for it was years now, she did not say so.

Sally did not ask Oxford to take her with him. She liked home life
best, and she was beginning to have a few friends. It was pleasant
to be a favorite in a modest way, if not a belle, and she liked the
serenades they gave her on moonlight nights. And above all, she loved
Miss Harvey, and she knew Miss Harvey would not care to take a journey
with Oxford and herself.

So Sally bade Oxford good-bye, and said she hoped he would have a
pleasant journey and come back the next day.

‘I may be gone two nights,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry unless I am gone
three.’

‘I am sorry to have you go,’ said Sally.

‘I am sorry to leave you, Sally, but it is too much to be tied to a
woman’s apron string, and there are three of them in this house, all
wearing aprons.’

‘I suppose you know best,’ said Sally, ‘but when I think of our early
days and of how we had to scratch around for food and a place to sleep
in, I am contented with my lot.’

‘I am glad you are, Sally, but I want to visit foreign parts. Perhaps I
can get as far as Malden.’

‘Oh, do be careful! Don’t get on a boat, whatever you do!’

Oxford promised to be cautious, for in the main he was a home-loving
cat. He merely wanted to see the world in a quiet and safe way without
running any great risks.

‘Remember there is fine hunting here,’ Sally said again.

‘Yes, but, as I said before, these women make such a fuss. They force
a fellow into going into the big world for hunting. You’d think, after
catching nine mice, no one would grudge me a robin or two and she with
her chicken dinners!’

Sally looked very down-hearted when the actual parting came.

‘You must buck up, Sally,’ he said, for he had learned this phrase from
the traveling cat. It seemed to mean more than ‘brace up.’ Sally was a
grown cat now, and a grown cat certainly ought to buck up.

Sally missed Oxford, but there was a certain peace about the place. She
could eat the whole of her dinner without his taking part of it, and
she could see her friends freely without having them driven off the
place by Oxford. She missed him, of course; still, there was a certain
peace.

No one discovered his absence until bedtime, for he had often been late
before.

‘Where is Oxford?’ Miss Harvey asked Elvira.

‘Oxford! I don’t know,’ said Elvira, as she took off her hat and coat.
‘Why should I know where Oxford is? I didn’t take him to Boston with
me.’

‘I thought you might have some idea where he was,’ said Miss Harvey.
‘He never comes in for me.’

They went through the garden and the Wild Wood calling, ‘Oxford,
Oxford, Oxford Gray, Junior.’

‘Sometimes he’ll come in for the Junior,’ said Elvira, but there was no
scampering of small feet and no furry face to be seen.

‘Cats certainly are the limit,’ said Elvira. ‘You get fond of one, and
the first thing you know he’s off like a shot.’

‘Sally looks very wise,’ said Miss Harvey, as they went back into the
house. ‘I dare say she knows just where Oxford is.’

‘I wish I did,’ Sally said, but no one heard her. ‘I fear he is in some
miserable place, and hungry and cold.’ For it had begun to rain. Sally
could hear the raindrops pattering down the window-pane.

‘This is a good little cat,’ and Elvira stroked Sally. ‘She never gives
us any trouble.’

‘She is a perfect lady, the sweetest little thing,’ said Miss Harvey,
as Sally climbed into her lap.

Sally put her two paws around Miss Harvey’s neck.

It was not until after the third night that Sally began to worry, for
Oxford had told her not to worry until after that. After the third
night, she began to miss him very much, indeed. There had been a
certain peace in his absence at first, but it seemed too peaceful now.
Moreover, she had had much pleasant conversation with Captain Ebony
Black, who had seen the world. He was a good-looking cat with his
long-haired, glossy, black coat and white shirt-front. A black cat was
an interesting variety in her life, and, although she knew that the
tigers were of a nobler race, it made a pleasant change to see some one
so different. Moreover, the black cat had said kind things to Sally, as
kind things as Miss Harvey had said. But he had gone now, and so she
had more time to worry about her brother.

‘I do hope he will realize there is no place like home before it is too
late and something awful happens to him,’ said Sally, and she softly
repeated the familiar words to herself: ‘“Mid pleasures and palaces,
though I may roam; be it ever so humble, there’s no place like Home.”’

She hoped he would think of his basket and his little sister, and of
kind Elvira who always warmed his milk, and of the haddock that she
served for him. Nothing seemed the same without Oxford.

When five days had gone by and still he did not come, gloom descended
upon the household.

‘I knew something would happen to him,’ said Miss Winifred. ‘That is
why I did not want another cat. Something always happens once I get
attached to one.’

‘He may turn up yet,’ said Miss Harvey.

‘He may turn up yet’--that sounded very hopeless. Had it come to that?

‘I wish I’d never let him go on the journey,’ said Sally, ‘and yet how
could I have helped it? His mind was made up. I know he won’t come
back. He told me not to worry until after three days, and that meant
that, if he did not come back then, something would have happened.’

The three women to whose apron strings Oxford had been tied, had been
around to the neighbors asking if any one had seen a tiger cat with
white paws and a white breast. As there were several cats of this sort
in the neighborhood, many people thought they had seen him, but the cat
never proved to be Oxford himself.

‘Black Sam, Sam Furbush-Tailby, I mean, was once gone ten days,’ said
Elvira. ‘Oxford will probably come back.’

‘Several of your pets have never come back,’ said Miss Winifred.

‘I am going over to Handerson Court,’ said Elvira. ‘Maybe some one
there will have seen him.’

As Elvira went along the strip of land that led to Handerson Court,
she heard a faint mew. It seemed a cry of distress, and it sounded to
her like Oxford’s voice. She hurried over the grass and went through
the gap in the fence. Presently she saw a thin tiger cat coming toward
her with his head firmly encased in a fish can that some one must have
carelessly thrown away without flattening it.

‘Oh, poor pussy, whoever you are, you are in an awful fix,’ said Elvira.

As the cat came nearer, she could hardly believe it was Oxford, he
looked so thin, but she thought she recognized the markings on his
tail. Another minute and there was no doubt at all, for he began to mew
piteously again, and it was Oxford’s voice. The proud Oxford, who felt
affection, but seldom showed it, was delighted to recognize the voice
of a friend.

Elvira picked him up and carried the frightened, struggling cat to the
house.

‘Poor dear, where have you been?’ she asked him. ‘You must have been
shut in somewhere, and when they found you and let you out, you must
have been so hungry that you smelled the fish and thought you could get
some of it.’

She put Oxford down in the kitchen. Sally was frightened at first at
the sight of the can with no head to be seen, but when she found it was
really Oxford, she ran up to him. Poor Oxford! Suppose they could not
get his head out of the can. But Elvira and Miss Harvey worked away at
him, and presently Oxford’s head emerged, but his beautiful fur was all
over rust. Elvira stamped on the can to flatten it out.

‘No cat will ever be caught in that can again,’ she said.

Sally flew to wash Oxford, and Miss Harvey and Elvira began to scrub
him, while Miss Winifred stood in the doorway and said, ‘Poor cat, do
you suppose he will ever get over it?’

‘I’m all right,’ Oxford said, but only Sally understood.

‘Where were you?’ Sally asked. ‘Why didn’t you come home before? Did
you have good hunting?’

‘I have been in prison, Sally,’ said Oxford. ‘I was accidentally shut
up in a building without food, so when I came out, I was very hungry.’

‘Did you think of home and your sister?’ Sally ventured to ask.

‘Yes, Sally.’ Oxford was never one to show much affection. ‘Yes,’
he said, ‘I thought of home, and of the hunting in the Wild Wood. I
thought, too, of Blackie; I am glad to see he is not about.’

‘Captain Ebony Black has had to go on another journey,’ said Sally.

‘I am glad of that; and Peter, where is he?’

‘Peter was around last night, I think. It is getting cold. I think he
slept in the cellar last night.’

Oxford was hungrily eating some haddock at the time. How good it tasted!

‘When I have got back to my full weight,’ said he, ‘I hope to show
Peter once for all that this is not his home.’

‘I am glad it is your home, Oxford,’ said Sally. ‘Aren’t you glad to
get back?’

Oxford was in truth very glad, indeed, but he did not like to show his
feelings.

‘A fellow might do worse,’ he said.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVIII

SALLY HAS HER WISH


One morning some weeks later, Elvira had the surprise of her life. She
came down into the kitchen and looked around for the two cats. Oxford
was stretched out on his woolen blanket under the table, but Sally
was nowhere to be seen. Elvira remembered that she had left the lower
drawer of the kitchen dresser open thinking that Sally might like to
sleep there for a change, so she went over and looked in. For a moment
she was startled and thought she must have seen wrong and that Sally
had caught two mice. But although the furry objects were the smallest
kittens she had ever seen and hardly larger than mice, there was no
mistaking their fur coats. One was black with four very tiny white
paws and a white breast, and the other was white with a tiger tail and
a tiger blanket on its back.

‘Miss Harvey,’ Elvira called, ‘did you ever see anything so sweet?’

Sally’s whole expression had changed. Instead of having a sad little
face, she looked proud and happy. It seemed as if she were saying: ‘See
what I have got for wishing for it? I have had to wish for a very long
time, but at last I have got just what I wanted, twins, a brother and
a sister, just like Oxford and myself, and the darlings shall have a
happier kittenhood than we had. And she said to herself,

    If I cannot have a mother, a mother I will be
  With some darling, furry children of my own,
    The furriest, purriest kittens, the most harum-scarum kittens,
  The liveliest, gayest kittens ever known.

It seemed this time as if Miss Harvey understood everything she said,
for she remarked, ‘Dear Sally has got her wish at last; see how
blissfully happy she looks, Elvira!’

They decided it would be wiser not to mention the kittens to Miss
Winifred for a few days, as she had a friend staying with her who was
taking all of her thoughts at present. So the kittens were almost a
week old before Miss Winifred knew about them.

One morning Elvira said, ‘Sally has two little kittens.’

‘Kittens!’ Miss Winifred said in astonishment. ‘I am very sorry to hear
it.’

‘Sorry to hear it,’ said Elvira, ‘and you think you are fond of cats.’

‘Four seem too many to have in one house, and they will grow into cats,
but we can keep them for a time and then send them to the Ellen Gifford
Home, or else find good homes for them.’

‘Would you like to see them?’ Elvira asked.

Miss Winifred went into the kitchen, and Elvira put one of the tiny
creatures into her hand and then the other. No one with a heart for
kittens could help being touched by the sight of these furry creatures
and the anxious expression of their mother’s face as she watched Miss
Winifred, for she was not sure of her.

[Illustration]

‘Please don’t drop them,’ she pleaded in her own language. ‘Please
don’t even think about homes for them later on. This is a good home,
and I will be a good mother. I do so want their kittenhood to be happy
and not sad like mine.’

Miss Winifred put the kittens down very gently.

‘At any rate, they can’t leave their mother for some weeks,’ she said.

It was not long before these tiny objects were scampering about the
kitchen floor, getting in front of Elvira’s feet just as their mother
and their uncle had done, for they found a way of getting out of the
drawer of the dresser. They made a stepladder of their mother, and,
climbing on her back, gave a flying leap to the floor and then chased
each other about. Patty, the little tiger kitten, was more lively than
her brother Eben, and she would turn a somersault as she reached him
and then they would skip about in high glee, and wrestle together.
There had never been such gay kittens in Miss Winifred’s house.

‘It is as good as a tonic having them around,’ said Miss Winifred, one
morning as she visited the kitchen.

‘Certainly they are like a tonic to their mother,’ said Miss Harvey. ‘I
never saw any one more changed.’

Oxford was not at all interested in his niece and nephew, so he spent
more of his time than usual away from home. It was the gentle Peter who
was all ready to be friendly, and when the two kittens went dancing up
to him, he was pleased. But Sally, who feared he would do them harm,
raised her powerful voice to call them to her, and then gave Peter the
thrashing that Oxford had meant to give him. She seemed possessed by
fury as she flew at him and put her claws in his fur.

‘Look at your perfect lady now,’ said Elvira to Miss Harvey.

‘She is a good mother. She is only afraid he will hurt her children,’
said Miss Harvey.

Sometimes in the days that followed, Sally wished that her desires
had not been granted so completely. She loved having her kittens and
she was glad they were having a happier kittenhood than her own, that
was so sombre and sad. But why had she ever asked for ‘harum-scarum’
kittens, or the ‘liveliest, gayest kittens ever known’? Surely it would
have been enough to wish for ‘Kittens’! Sally was not sure that it was
ever wise to wish too hard for anything, and yet she liked to watch her
children playing so fearlessly, for kind Elvira and dear Miss Harvey
let them frisk about the kitchen as they pleased. One day Eben got into
one of Elvira’s rubbers that were in the entry. He peered out from this
pleasant spot as if to say, ‘See the nice little house I have found,
it just fits me.’ Baskets and boxes they appropriated for their own,
and on cold nights, after the kitchen fire was out, Sally joined them
and they slept warm and comfortable in a pasteboard box just the right
size for three.

[Illustration]

When they ran up Elvira’s back and pulled out her hairpins, or landed
on the clock shelf in the kitchen in search of their catnip mice and
knocked down a few trifles, Sally said, ‘Children, children, why can’t
you be quiet and well-behaved, as your uncle and I were!’

‘But, mother, you once told us you knocked a candlestick off the study
mantelpiece,’ Patty reminded her.

‘That is true,’ said their mother, who was a very fair cat.

‘You said you climbed up Elvira,’ said Eben; ‘that is what put the idea
into our heads.’

‘I never did it but once or twice, not every day. I was a much quieter
kitten.’

‘Because you were half-starved,’ said Patty. ‘Mother, just be a kitten
with us. Be young with your children.’




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIX

SALLY IS YOUNG WITH HER CHILDREN


Before Sally had any kittens she used to wonder at the shiftless way in
which the wild tortoise-shell cat who sometimes came about the place
dealt with her kittens. Sally knew she would not have the slightest
trouble in making her children mind, if she were so fortunate as to
have any. But it is one thing to make imaginary children mind and quite
another to deal with real ones.

She would say in her powerful voice, ‘Come, Patty, come, Eben, be
quiet. Come to me. Let Elvira’s sweater alone,’ and the pair would
gayly prance about the room with the sweater between them, Eben firmly
grasping a sleeve, and Patty the hem.

‘Children, did you hear what I said?’ she would add.

‘Yes, mother,’ said the gay pair, and they went on dancing about the
room. Then Sally would raise her voice again, and finally Elvira would
stamp her foot and say, ‘Sally, be quiet!’ which was very unfair of
Elvira, Sally thought, when she was doing her best to make the kittens
mind.

‘I can’t understand why you are not better behaved,’ she said to them.

‘Mother, dear, didn’t you want us to have a lively, happy kittenhood,
different from yours?’ Patty asked, as she dropped the sweater and put
a paw around her mother’s neck.

Then Patty leaped upon the table and gave a flying jump into the sink,
where Elvira had put some water in a pan. Eben quickly followed her.

‘We are waiting for Miss Winifred to come out,’ said Patty. ‘We like
her lap for naps, it is so woolly and she’s so kind.’

‘Kind!’ said Sally. ‘She thought of sending you to the Ellen Gifford
Home. Perhaps she will yet.’

‘I am sure she hasn’t any idea of it, mother,’ said Patty. ‘Once Miss
Winifred gets fond of you, she’s all right. She’s a dear. Her lap is a
lot woollier than Elvira’s.’

Presently Miss Winifred came into the kitchen, moving slowly in her
near-sighted way, so as not to step on a kitten. Patty darted past her
as if to dare her to step on her tail. Miss Winifred seated herself in
the big rocking-chair, ready to discuss the meals. Presently Patty ran
up her skirt and settled down in her lap. Eben then appeared, getting
up very slowly with more than one fall, but arriving at last. He always
liked everything Patty had, so he moved her to the other side of Miss
Winifred’s lap and slipped into her place.

Sally came over and sat on the arm of Miss Winifred’s chair, for she
still felt a little uneasy about the Ellen Gifford Home.

‘These kittens are perfectly fascinating,’ said Miss Winifred.

‘Did you hear that, mother?’ said Eben.

‘She knows how to make pretty speeches,’ said Sally.

‘I like pretty speeches,’ said Eben. ‘I wish you’d make a few, mother.’

‘If you’ll come into the basket to take your nap, I’ll sing the song
that your great-great-grandmother composed. The Martha Furbush for whom
you are named, Patty.’

Out of curiosity to hear the song, the kittens scrambled down from Miss
Winifred’s lap and joined their mother in the basket. She gently purred:

        Purr, darlings, purr,
  While mother is washing your fur.
  In all the great nation
  There’s no occupation
  That’s half so sweet to her.
        Purr, darlings, purr.

Patty grew restless while the song was going on, and she skipped out of
the clothes-basket.

‘My darling, don’t you think it a sweet song?’

‘I think it is a lot more interesting hearing Elvira reading the paper
aloud to Miss Winifred, than to listen to you singing,’ said Patty.

‘When you have children of your own, Patty, you will appreciate how
every mother feels.’

‘I just love to hear about the cat that came all forlorn and full of
burrs to the lady who took him in and made a home for him,’ Patty went
on. ‘I’d love to get out and be stuck full of burrs, mother.’

‘There was a verse in the Cradle Song about hissing,’ Sally said.

‘Oh, try to remember it, mother,’ they begged.

‘I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten it.’

As the kittens grew older, Sally found it harder and harder to make
them mind. One day she found her dear little Patty in a drawer in the
kitchen, one that she had never got into before. Sally was terribly
worried for fear some thoughtless person would shut the drawer with her
child in it. She called and called to Patty to come out. She called
until Elvira stamped her foot and said, ‘Be quiet, Sally.’

Then Sally stopped to think things out.

‘I see that the door into the passageway is open, Patty,’ she said.
‘Wouldn’t you like to come with me into the other part of the house?’

It had worked. Patty sprang out of the drawer and gayly followed her
mother, for she had longed to go into the parlor again ever since the
day that she and Eben had been taken there to show to some admiring
ladies who were having afternoon tea with Miss Winifred.

Patty and her mother went up a flight of stairs to the sewing-room
door, which was open. There was no door open into the other part of the
house.

‘Oh, is that all you’ve got to show me! I’ve seen this old room
before,’ said Patty.

‘You’ve seen it before? When?’

‘Uncle Peter showed it to us one day when you were in the parlor with
Miss Harvey.’

‘Uncle Peter! That tramp cat is no relation of yours. It is Oxford who
is your uncle.’

‘Uncle Peter said he wasn’t any relation,’ said Patty, ‘but we asked
if we might call him that, for we like him a lot better. Uncle Oxford
tries to make us mind, and it isn’t his business. He isn’t our mother.’

‘I don’t want you playing around with Peter.’

‘But, mother, he tells us such lots of exciting stories. He’s going to
take Eben hunting as soon as we are big enough to be let out.’

Patty was halfway down the stairs as she spoke. Her mother followed her
anxiously. What should she do to keep her child out of that drawer. To
her intense relief, she saw that Elvira had closed it.

It was a very cold day, and Eben was standing absorbed in the
passageway to the outside door, watching Peter, who was fighting
another cat.

‘Eben,’ she called in her shrill voice, ‘come in at once, you will take
cold.’

‘For pity sake, keep quiet, Sally,’ said Elvira, stamping her foot.
Eben did not move.

Then Patty went and touched her brother with her paw and tried to get
him in out of the cold. Cat fights had no interest for her. He shook
her off and remained rooted to the spot.

‘Oh, children, children,’ said Sally in despair. She went over to Miss
Harvey, who had come in and was sitting by the table. She had been too
busy with her kittens to pay any attention to Miss Harvey of late. Now
she put her paws around her neck and her face up to be kissed.

‘Poor, dear Sally,’ said Miss Harvey, ‘it is quite a job to be a
mother.’

‘What’s the use of trying to make us mind, mother? It’s much more fun
to do the things yourself.’ As he spoke, Eben began to chase after his
sister’s tail, Patty chased after his, and finally Sally joined them,
and the three had a mad race around the kitchen floor.

‘Isn’t it more amusing, mother, than to sing, “Purr, darlings, purr?”’
said Eben, as the three paused for breath.

‘We made a better song than that the other night,’ said Patty.

‘You made a song?’ Sally was delighted. She was proud of her kittens.

‘Eben made most of it, but I helped him,’ said Patty, and the two
kittens said together:

[Illustration]

  ‘Skip, mother, skip with us,
  Don’t hold us back and make a fuss,
  You look so young you’re surely able
  To jump with us upon the table,
  Then give a leap into the sink,
  Where you will find a cooling drink.
  Skip, mother, skip with us,
  Don’t hold us back and make a fuss.’

‘And you call that poetry,’ said their mother. ‘I can do better than
that.’

‘Some day I’ll make better poetry than that,’ said Eben. And a few
weeks later, when he was three months old, and Sally heard an evening
song that he had made, she felt that the wish of her heart was to be
granted at last, and that her little son was to be the companion she
had longed for.

  ‘I’m thankful for my happy days,
  So full of work and pleasant plays,
  When Patty’s tail and mine we chase,
  And mother joins us in the race.
  I’m thankful for my long black fur,
  And mother says it pleases her.
  And for my eyes that see so far,
  And watch the moon and evening star.
  I love both sunshine and the rain
  That patters on the window-pane.
  I love the people living here.
  I think Elvira is a dear.
  Miss Harvey is just to my mind,
  And even Miss Winifred is kind.
  I love the world, I think it’s great,
  What kitten could want a better fate?
  I’m glad my months are only three
  With all of life ahead of me.’

‘It might be better,’ said Sally, who did not believe in too much
praise, ‘but it is a great improvement on “Skip, mother, skip with us.”’

Sally wondered if her son would be a famous poet, like his
great-great-grandfather, William Furbush-Tailby, when he was a
full-grown cat. She often wondered as to what the future of her
children would be. Patty was so extremely bright and enterprising that
she felt sure she would be able to look out for herself. And then,
too, Sally thought her a beauty, for she looked exactly as she would
have liked to look, with her round white face and beautiful eyes set
far apart, and her tiger blanket and the tiger cap that covered the
back of her head and came down over her forehead and looked as if
it were parted like hair. But Eben, although slower, was a kitten of
real distinction. She felt he might make his mark in the world. He
was so absorbed in cat fights, even at his tender age, that he might
be a great warrior, or he might become like his grandfather, a mighty
hunter, for he sat for five minutes at a time before a mouse-hole.

Sally liked to keep them young as long as possible and she was glad
that it was to be a late spring, for now, at the beginning of March,
there was snow on the ground, and Elvira said to Miss Harvey, ‘It will
be some time before we can let the kittens out-of-doors.’ So at present
they were safe from the peril of meeting intruding cats or being chased
by that villain Spot.

Meanwhile Sally raced around the kitchen with her children and
scampered up and down the stairs that led to the sewing-room as if she
were their age and not a sober cat.

‘I am having my youth now,’ she said to Oxford, who was watching the
three with his slightly superior air, as he looked up from his last
mouthful of haddock. He was a little too lazy to join in the race, and
he preferred to take his exercise out-of-doors.

‘Sally, you have learned to brace up,’ he said.

  This tale is ended, yet, not so,
  The kittens’ tails, they grow and grow.
  A tiger tail that’s tipped with white,
  A black one, Sally’s chief delight.
  When the Spring comes, with joyous purr,
  In coats of black, and tiger fur,
  They’ll hasten through the open door,
  The earth’s great wonders to explore.


THE END




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76985 ***