But he wouldn’t come, and so they could not have any more scenes from “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” as Weejums was to have taken the part of Miss Ophelia and any number of others. So the last tableau was announced as “A Sorrowful Widow Weeping over her Husband’s Grave.”
Eunice was the widow, with a red tablecloth over her head, which was the nearest she could find to anything black, and Kenneth was the grave, down on all fours, covered with a yellow lamb’s-wool rug. He was dreadfully warm and uncomfortable in this position, but behaved very well, until Franklin gave a kind of snort and said, “Ho, who ever saw a grave with panties on!”
Then the grave turned a complete somersault, and lay there chuckling wickedly, while the sorrowful widow took off her red tablecloth and scolded him.
The audience went away then, and Eunice found that Cyclone had slipped the pincushion around under his stomach, and chewed all the bran out. And when Weejums came out from under the bureau, she had to squeeze herself so flat that she howled all the way, and some black, yellow, and white hairs were left behind. But this was because she was getting to be a big kitten now, and could no longer have gone into a Christmas stocking.
CHAPTER THREE
THE BLACK RABBIT WITH WHITE SPOTS, AND THE WHITE RABBIT WITH BLACK SPOTS
THE children went East with their mother that summer, and Weejums stayed with Grandmother and Cyclone at the farm. But Eunice wrote to her quite often, and learned from her replies that she was having a splendid time chasing grasshoppers.
“I’d enclose one tender little one for you,” Weejums wrote; “but your grandmother says that they wouldn’t agree with you. It seems a pity, because they have such juicy little red legs.”
Eunice did not really believe that Weejums wrote these letters herself, but was quite certain that she thought all these things, even if she never mentioned them.