Chapter VIII: The Cat That Went Back

Agnes put her hand upon it in the pantry and dropped a glass dish ker-smash! She screamed so, that Ruth came running, opened the door, and, as it scurried to escape into the dining-room, the oldest Kenway girl dodged and struck her head with almost stunning force against the doorframe. She “saw stars” for a few moments.

“Oh! oh!” screamed Agnes.

“Ow! ow!” cried Ruth.

“Whatever is the matter with you girls?” demanded Mrs. McCall, hurrying in from the front hall.

She suddenly saw it, following the baseboard around the room in a panic of fear, and Mrs. McCall gathered her skirts close about her ankles and called Uncle Rufus.

“He, he!” chuckled the black man, making one swoop for Mrs. Mouse and catching her in a towel. “All disher combobberation over a leetle, teeny, gray mouse. Glo-ree! s’pose hit had been a rat?”

“The house is just over-run with mice,” complained Mrs. McCall. “And traps seem to do no good. I always _would_ jump, if I saw a mouse. I can’t help it.”

“Me, too,” cried Agnes. “There’s something so sort of _creepy_ about mice. Worse than spiders.”

“Oh, dear!” moaned Ruth, holding the side of her head. “I wish you’d find some way of getting rid of them, Uncle Rufus. I’m afraid of them, too.”

“Lor’ bress yo’ heart an’ soul, Missie! I done cotched this one fo’ you-uns, an’ I wisht I could ketch ’em all. But Unc’ Rufus ain’t much of a mouser—naw suh! What you-alls wants is a cat.”

“We ought to have a good cat—that’s a fact,” admitted Mrs. McCall.

“I like cats,” said Dot, who had come in to see what the excitement was all about. “There’s one runs along our back fence. Do you ’spect we could coax her to come in here and hunt mouses? Let’s show her this one Uncle Rufus caught, and maybe she’ll follow us in,” added the hopeful little girl.

Although this plan for securing a cat did not meet with the family’s approval, Agnes was reminded of the cat problem that very afternoon, when she had occasion to go to Mr. Stetson’s grocery store, where the family traded.

She liked Myra Stetson, the groceryman’s daughter, almost as well as she did Eva Larry. And Myra had nothing to say about the “haunt” which was supposed to pester the old Corner House.

Myra helped about the store, after school hours and on Saturdays. When Agnes entered this day, Mr. Stetson was scolding.

“I declare for’t!” he grumbled. “There’s no room to step around this store for the cats. Myra! I can’t stand so many cats—they’re under foot all the time. You’ll have to get rid of some of your pets. It’s making me poor to feed them all, in the first place!”

“Oh, father!” cried Myra. “They keep away the mice, you know.”

“Yes! Sure! They keep away the mice, because there’s so many cats and kittens here, the mice couldn’t crowd in. I tell you I can’t stand it—and there’s that old Sandy-face with four kittens in the basket behind the flour barrels in the back room. Those kittens have got their eyes open. Soon you can’t catch them at all. I tell you, Myra, you’ve got to get rid of them.”

“Sandy-face and all?” wailed Myra, aghast.

“Yes,” declared her father. “That’ll be five of ’em gone in a bunch. Then maybe we can at least _count_ those that are left.”

“Oh, Myra!” cried Agnes. “Give them to us.”

“What?” asked the store-keeper’s girl. “Not the whole five?”

“Yes,” agreed Agnes, recklessly. “Mrs. McCall says we are over-run with mice, and I expect we could feed more than five cats for a long time on the mouse supply of the old Corner House.”

“Goodness! Old Sandy-face is a real nice mother cat——”

“Let’s see her,” proposed Agnes, and followed Myra out into the store-room of the grocery.

In a broken hand-basket in which some old clothes had been dropped, Sandy-face had made her children’s cradle. They looked like four spotted, black balls. The old cat herself was with them, and she stretched and yawned, and looked up at the two girls with perfect trust in her speckled countenance.

Her face looked as though salt and pepper, or sand, had been sprinkled upon it. Her body was marked with faint stripes of black and gray, which proved her part “tiger” origin. She was “double-toed” on her front feet, and her paws were big, soft cushions that could unsheath dangerous claws in an instant.

“She ought to be a good mouser,” said Agnes, reflectively. It _did_ look like a big contract to cart five cats home at once!

“But I wouldn’t feel right to separate the family—especially when the kittens are so young,” Myra said. “If your folks will let you take them—well! it would be nice,” she added, for she was a born lover of cats and could not think, without positive pain, of having any of the cunning kittens cut short in their feline careers.

“Oh, Ruth will be glad,” said Agnes, with assurance. “So will Mrs. McCall. We need cats—we just actually _need_ them, Myra.”

“But how will you get them home?” asked the other girl, more practical than the impulsive Agnes.

“Goodness! I hadn’t thought of that,” confessed Agnes.

“You see, cats are funny creatures,” Myra declared. “Sometimes they find their way home again, even if they are carried miles and miles away.”

“But if I take the kittens, too—wouldn’t she stay with her own kittens?”

“Well—p’r’aps. But the thing _is_, how are you going to carry them all?”

“Say! they’re all in this old basket,” said Agnes. “Can’t I carry them just as they are?”

She picked the basket up. Old Sandy-face just “mewed” a little, but did not offer to jump out.

“Oh!” gasped Agnes. “They’re heavy.”

“You couldn’t carry them all that way. And if Sandy saw a dog——”

“Maybe I’ll have to blindfold her?” suggested Agnes.

“Put her in a bag!” cried Myra.

“But that seems so cruel!”

“I know. She might smother,” admitted Myra.

“Goodness me!” said Agnes, briskly, “if we’re going to have a cat, I don’t want one that will always be afraid of me because I popped her into a bag. Besides, a cat is a dignified creature, and doing a thing like that would hurt her feelings. Don’t you think so?”

“I guess Sandy-face wouldn’t like it,” agreed Myra, laughing at Agnes’ serious speech and manner.

“I tell you what,” the second-oldest Kenway girl said. “I’ll run home with the groceries your father has put up for me, and get the kids to come and help. They can certainly carry the kittens, while I take Sandy.”

“Of course,” agreed the relieved Myra. She saw a chance of disposing of the entire family without hurting her own, or the cats’ feelings, and she was much pleased.

As for the impulsive Agnes, when she made up her mind to do a thing, she never thought of asking advice. She reached home with the groceries and put them into the hands of Uncle Rufus at the back door. Then she called Tess and Dot from their play in the garden.

“Are your frocks clean, girls?” she asked them, hurriedly. “I want you to go to Mr. Stetson’s store with me.”

“What for, Aggie?” asked Dot, but quite ready to go. By Agnes’ appearance it was easy to guess that there was something exciting afoot.

“Shall I run ask Ruth?” Tess inquired, more thoughtfully.

Uncle Rufus was watching them from the porch. Agnes waved her hand to the black man, as she ushered the two smaller girls out of the yard onto Willow Street.

“No,” she said to Tess. “Uncle Rufus sees us, and he’ll explain to Ruth.” At the moment, she did not remember that Uncle Rufus knew no more about their destination than Ruth herself.

The smaller girls were eager to learn the particulars of the affair as Agnes hurried them along. But the bigger girl refused to explain, until they were in the grocer’s store-room.

“Now! what do you think of them?” she demanded.

Tess and Dot were delighted with the kittens and Sandy-face. When they learned that all four kittens and the mother cat were to be their very own for the taking away, they could scarcely keep from dancing up and down.

Oh, yes! Tess and Dot were sure they could carry the basket of kittens. “But won’t that big cat scratch you, when you undertake to carry her, Aggie?” asked Tess.

“I won’t let her!” declared Agnes. “Now you take the basket right up when I lift out Sandy.”

“I—I’m afraid she’ll hurt you,” said Dot.

“She’s real kind!” Agnes lifted out the mother-cat. Sandy made no complaint, but kept her eyes fixed upon the kittens. She was used to being handled by Myra. So she quickly snuggled down into Agnes’ arms, purring contentedly. The two smaller girls lifted the basket of kittens between them.

“Oh, this is nice,” said Tess, delightedly. “We can carry them just as easy! Can’t we, Dot?”

“Then go right along. We’ll go out of that side door there, so as not to take them through the store,” instructed Agnes.

Sandy made no trouble at all. Agnes was careful to walk so that the big cat could look right down into the basket where her four kittens squirmed and occasionally squealed their objections to this sort of a “moving day.”

The sun was warm and the little things could not be cold, but they missed the warmth of their mother’s body, and her fur coat to snuggle up against! When they squealed, Sandy-face evinced some disturbance of mind, but Agnes managed to quiet her, until they reached Mrs. Adams’ front gate.

Mrs. Adams was the old lady who had told the Kenways about their father breaking one of her windows when he was a boy. She had shown much interest in the Corner House girls. Now she was out on her front porch and saw them coming along Willow Street.

“Whatever have you girls been up to?” she demanded, pleasantly enough, but evincing much curiosity.

“Why, Mrs. Adams,” said Agnes, eagerly. “Don’t you see? We’ve adopted a family.”

“Humph! A family? Not those young’uns of Petunia Blossom? I see Uncle Rufus back at the old Corner House, and I expect the whole family will be there next.”

“Why,” said Agnes, somewhat surprised by this speech, “these are only cats.”

“Cats?”

“Yes’m. Cats. That is, _a_ cat and four kittens.”

Mrs. Adams started down the path to see. The girls stopped before her gate. At that moment there was a whoop, a scrambling in the road, and a boy and a bulldog appeared from around the nearest corner.

With unerring instinct the bulldog, true to his nature, came charging for the cat he saw in Agnes’ arms.

Poor old Sandy-face came to life in a hurry. From a condition of calm repose, she leaped in a second of time to wild and vociferous activity. Matters were on a war basis instantly.

She uttered a single “Yow!” and leaped straight out of Agnes’ arms to the bole of a maple tree standing just inside Mrs. Adams’ fence. She forgot her kittens and everything else, and scrambled up the tree for dear life, while the bulldog, tongue hanging out, and his little red eyes all alight with excitement, leaped against the fence as though he, too, would scramble over it and up the tree.

“Oh! that horrid dog! Take him away, you Sammy Pinkney!” cried Mrs. Adams. “Come into the yard, girls!”

The gate was open, and the little girls ran in with the basket of kittens. Each kitten, in spite of its youth, was standing stiff-legged in the basket, its tiny back arched, its fur on end, and was “spitting” with all its might.

The mother cat had forgotten her children in this moment of panic. The dancing bulldog outside the fence quite crazed her. She ran out on the first limb of the tree, and leaped from it into the next tree. There was a long row of maples here and the frightened Sandy-face went from one to the other like a squirrel.

“She’s running away! she’s running away!” cried Agnes.

“Where did you get that cat and those kittens, child?” demanded Mrs. Adams.

“At Mr. Stetson’s store,” said Agnes, sadly, as the old cat disappeared.

“She’s going back,” said the lady firmly. “That’s where she is going. A scared cat always will make for home, if she can. And now! what under the canopy are you going to do with that mess of kittens—without a cat to mother them?”

Agnes was stricken dumb for the moment. Tess and Dot were all but in tears. The situation was very complicated indeed, even if the boy had urged his dog away from the gate.

The four little kittens presented a problem to the Corner House girls that was too much for even the ready Agnes to solve. Here were the kittens. The cat had gone back. Agnes had a long scratch on her arm—and it smarted. Tess and Dot were on the verge of tears, while the kittens began to mew and refused to be pacified.