“Why not?”
“They’re not big enough to leave their mother. I thought I saw a cat, a yellow cat, on your porch one morning.”
“Oh, that’s the stable cat. He is very wild and won’t let me come near him. I’d rather have a kitten anyway.”
“Well, we can go see the kittens at Effie’s even if we can’t take them just yet, and we shall have the crow.”
“And Polly,” put in Adele with a laugh.
“She isn’t a pet; she is a friend,” replied Jessie with some dignity, feeling that Adele meant to underrate Playmate Polly’s importance.
In a very short time Ebon had become quite tame, and followed the little girls as if he were a dog. He constantly amused them by his funny ways. Although he had not yet learned to talk, Sam declared that he would in time, and meanwhile Adele went with Jessie to see Effie’s kittens, and was promised a black one. So from having no companions at all, Jessie felt that she would be very well supplied that winter. “There will be you and your kitten, me and my kitten, Polly and Eb,” she said to Adele. “That will be a great many of us to play together.”
“Yes, and there will be Miss Eloise and horrid lessons,” returned Adele.
Jessie sighed. “Yes,” she said, “I have been thinking of that. I wish we could take lessons like pills and have done with them.”
“In jelly?”