THE "KNITTING-WOMAN"
The "knitting-woman" met Edith at the dining-room door after luncheon, and said to her rather sharply:—
"Well, little girl, I thought you liked kittens?"
"I do, Mrs.—madam, I certainly do," replied Edith feeling guilty and ashamed. "But Nate Pollard took us to see the gold mine and the schoolhouse and we've just got back."
"Oh, that's it! I thought 'twas very still around here—I missed the noise of the boyoes.—You don't know what I mean by boyoes," she added, smiling. "I picked up the word in Ireland. I'm always picking up words. It means boys."
"I understand; oh, yes."
"Well, 'twas a little trouble to me, your not coming when I expected you; but you may come this afternoon. I'll be ready in ten minutes."
"Yes, madam, thank you."
Edith ran to her mother laughing. "Oh, mamma, she is the queerest woman! Calls boys boyoes! I must go to see her kitten whether I want to or not—in just ten minutes! I wish I could take Kyzie with me; would you dare?"
"Certainly not. Katharine has not been invited. And don't make a long call, Edith."
"No, mamma, I'll not even sit down. I'll just look at the zebra kitty and come right away."
Mrs. Dunlee smiled. If there were many pets at Number Five it was not likely that Edith would hasten away. "Remember, daughter, fifteen minutes is long enough for a call on an entire stranger. You don't wish to annoy Mrs. McQuilken; but if you should happen to forget, you'll hear this little bell tinkle, and that will remind you to leave."
Number Five was a very interesting room, about as full as it could hold of oddities from various countries, together with four cats, a canary, and a mocking-bird.
"If you had come this morning you would have seen Mag, that's the magpie," said Mrs. McQuilken. "She's off now, pretty creature. She likes to be picking a fuss with the chickens."
The good lady had been knitting, but she dropped her work into the large pocket of her black apron, and moved up an easy-chair for her guest. Edith forgot to take it. Her eyes were roving about the room, attracted by the curiosities, though she dared not ask a single question.
"That nest on the wall looks odd to you, I dare say," said Mrs. McQuilken. "The twigs are woven together so closely that it looks nice enough for a lady's work-bag, now doesn't it?"
Edith said she thought it did.
"Well, that's the magpie's nest. She laid seven eggs in it once. I keep it now for her to sleep in; it's Mag's cot-bed."
Edith's eyes, still roving, espied a handsome kitty asleep on the lounge. It must be the zebra kitty because of its black and dove-colored stripes. Most remarkable stripes, so regular and distinct, yet so softly shaded. The face was black, with whiskers snow-white. How odd! Edith had never seen white whiskers on a kitten. And then the long, sweeping black tail!
Mrs. McQuilken watched the little girl's face and no longer doubted her fondness for kittens.
"I call her Zee for short. Look at that now!" And Mrs. McQuilken straightened out the tail which was coiled around Zee's back.
"Oh, how beautifully long!" cried Edith.
"Long? I should say so! There was a cat-show at Los Angeles last fall, and one cat took a prize for a tail not so long as this by three-quarters of an inch! And Zee only six months old!"
The kitty, wide awake by this time, was holding high revel with a ball of yarn which the tortoise-shell cat had purloined from her mistress's basket.
"Dear thing! Oh, isn't she sweet?" said Edith, dropping on her knees before the graceful creature.
Mrs. McQuilken enjoyed seeing the child go off into small raptures; Edith was fast winning her heart.
"Does your mother like cats?" she suddenly inquired.
"Not particularly," replied Edith, clapping her hands, as Zee with a quick dash bore away the ball out of the very paws of the coon cat. "Mamma thinks cats are cold-hearted," said she, hugging Zee to her bosom. "She says they don't love anybody."
"I deny it!" exclaimed Mrs. McQuilken, indignantly. "Tell your mother to make a study of cats and she'll know better."
Edith looked rather frightened. "Yes'm, I'll tell her."
"They have very deep feelings and folks ought to know it. Now, listen, little girl. I had two maltese kittens once. They were sisters and loved each other better than any girl sisters you ever saw. One of the kittens got caught in a trap and we had to kill her. And the other one went round mewing and couldn't be comforted. She pined away, that kitty did, and in three days she died. Now I know that for a fact."
"Poor child!" said Edith, much touched. "She wasn't cold-hearted, I'll tell mamma about that."
"Well, if she doesn't like 'em perhaps it wouldn't do any good; but while you're about it you might tell her of two tortoise-shell cats I had. They were sisters too. Whiff had four kittens and Puff had one and lost it. And the way Whiff comforted Puff! She took her right home into her own basket and they brought up the four kittens together. Wasn't that lovely?"
"Oh, wasn't it, though?" said Edith. "Cats have hearts, I always knew they did."
"That shows you're a sensible little girl," returned the old lady approvingly. "But you haven't told me yet what your name is?"
"Edith Dunlee."
"I knew 'twas Dunlee—that's a Scotch name; but I didn't know about the Edith. Well, Edith, so you've been to see the gold mine? Pokerish place, isn't it? I hear they're going to bring down the engine from the big plant and try to start it up again."
Edith had no idea what she meant by the "big plant," so made no reply. Mrs. McQuilken went back to the subject of cats.
"Did you know the Egyptians used to worship cats? Well, sometimes they did. And when their cats died they went into mourning for them."
"How queer!"
"It does seem so, but it's just as you look at it, Edith. Cats are a sight of company. I didn't care so much about them or about birds either when my husband was alive and my little children, but now—"
Again she paused, and this time she did not go on again. Some one out of doors laughed; it was Jimmy Dunlee, and the mocking-bird took up the merry sound and echoed it to perfection.
"Doesn't that seem human?" cried Mrs. McQuilken. And really it did. It was exactly the laugh of a human boy, though it came from the throat of a tiny bird.
"My little boys, Pitt and Roscoe, liked to hear him do that," said Mrs. McQuilken.
Edith observed that she did not say "my boyoes." "Pitt, the one that died in Japan, doted on the mocking-bird. The other boy, Roscoe, was all bound up in the canary."
"Does the canary sing?"
"Yes, he's a grand singer. Just you wait till he pipes up. You'll be surprised. But you remember what I was saying a little while ago about your mother? That zebra kitty—"
Before she could finish the sentence Edith heard the warning tinkle of the tea-bell, and sprang up suddenly, exclaiming: "Good-by, Mrs.—good-by, madam, I must go now. You've been very kind, thank you. Good-by."
And out of the door and away she skipped, leaving her hostess, who had not heard the bell, to wonder at her haste. "She went like a shot off a shovel," said the good lady, taking up her knitting-work. "She seemed to be such a well-mannered little girl, too! What got into her all at once? She acted as if she was 'possessed of the fox.'"
This is a common expression in Japan, and naturally Mrs. McQuilken had caught it up, as she had caught up other odd things in her travels. She was something of a mocking-bird in her way, was the captain's widow.
"I've taken quite a fancy to Edith," she added, "a minute more and I should have offered to give her the zebra kitty. But there, I shouldn't want to make a fuss in the family. That woman, her mother, to think of her talking so hard about cats! She doesn't look like that kind of a woman. I'm surprised."
Edith ran back to her mother breathless.
"Oh, mamma, I was having such a good time! And she didn't appear to be 'annoyed,' she talked just as fast all the time! But the bell rang while she was saying something and I had to run."
"Had to run? I hope you were not abrupt, my child?"
"Oh, no, mamma, not at all. I said 'good-by' twice, and thanked her and told her she had been very kind. That wasn't abrupt, was it? But oh, that kitty's tail! I forget how many inches and a quarter longer than any other kitty's tail in this state! And they are not cold-hearted,—I mean cats,—I promised to tell you."
Here followed an account of the two cat-sisters, who loved each other better than girl-sisters.
"And think of one of them dying of grief, the sweet thing! Human people don't die of grief, do they, mamma?"
"Not often, Edith. Such instances have been known, but they are very rare."
"Well," struck in wee Lucy, who had been listening to the touching story, "well, I guess some folks would! Bab would die for grief of me, and I would die for grief of Bab; we said we would!"
She made this absurd little speech with tears in her eyes; but Kyzie and Edith dared not laugh, for mamma's forefinger was raised. Mamma never allowed them to ridicule the friendship of the two little girls, who had made believe for more than a year that they were "aunt" and "niece." The play might be rather foolish, but the love was very sweet and true.
Lucy had been thinking all day of Barbara and longing for her arrival. A full hour before it was time for the stage she went a little way up the mountain with Jimmy, and they took turns gazing down the winding, dusty road through a spy-glass. "I shan't wait here any longer. What's the use?" declared Jimmy.
"She's coming! she's coming! I saw her first!" was Lucy's glad cry. And she ran down the mountain in haste, though the stage, a grayish green one, was just turning a curve at least a mile away.
"Well, you have been parted a good while," said Uncle James, as the two dear friends met and embraced on the coach steps; "a day and a half!"
"I'd have 'most died if I'd waited any longer," said Aunt Lucy, putting her arm around her niece and leading her up the gravel path with the pink "old hen and chickens" on either side.
The little girls were entirely unlike, and the contrast was pleasant to see. Lucy was very fair, with light curling hair:—
"Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds
That ope in the month of May."
Bab was quite as pretty, but in another way. She had brilliant dark eyes and straight dark hair with a satin gloss. She was half a head shorter than her "auntie," though their ages were about the same. People liked to see them together, for they were always sociable and happy, and loved each other "dearilee."
"Oh, Bab," said wee Lucy, "I had such a loneness without you!"
"I had a loneness too, Auntie Lucy. Seemed as if the time never would go."
And then the dark head and the fair head met again for more kisses, while both the mammas looked on and said, in low tones and with smiles, as they always did:—
"How sweet! Now we shall hear them singing about the place like two little birds."
This was Tuesday. The days went on happily until Thursday afternoon, when "the Dunlee party," which always included the Hales and Sanfords, set forth up the mountain for a sight of the famous "air-castle." Of course Nate was with them, but this time not as a guide; the guide was Uncle James.
The road, though rather steep, was not a hard one. Mr. Dunlee had his alpenstock, and Uncle James walked beside him, holding little Eddo by the hand. Bab and Lucy, or "the little two," as Aunt Vi called them, were side by side as usual, and Lucy had asked Bab to repeat the story of "Little Bo-Peep" in French, for Nate wanted to hear it. Bab could speak French remarkably well.
"Petit beau bouton
A perde ses moutons,
Il ne sais pas que les a pris.
O laissez les tranquille!
Ils se retournerons,
Chacun sa queue apres lui."
Mrs. Dunlee and Kyzie were just behind the children, and while Bab was repeating the verse Kyzie said in a low tone:—
"Oh, mamma, let me walk with you all the way, please. There's something I want to talk about."
She looked so earnest that Mrs. Dunlee wondered not a little what it was her eldest daughter had to say.