“Oh, but there’s reasons why I can’t,” said Franklin, desperately. “I don’t want to tell before the kids.”
“Well, they can be my rabbits for to-night, then,” said Mrs. Wood, in her quiet way, “and to-morrow we’ll decide whom they really belong to. I shall feel dreadfully proud to own some rabbits, even if I can’t have them but one night.”
She smiled, and Eunice and Kenneth began to laugh, thinking the whole affair a joke.
“But they’re too little to put with Dulcie and Stamper, aren’t they, Mother?” Eunice said. “We’ll have to put them with Weejums and the kittens.”
“Oh, she’ll eat ’em up!” said Kenneth.
“No, she won’t,” said Mrs. Wood. “We’ll watch her and see. They are not so different from her own babies.”
But when they took the little bunnies to Weejums’ box, there was no Weejums to receive them, and the three kittens were crying with hunger.
“I’ll go call her,” said Eunice, running to the side door. But no distant “purr-eow” answered to her call, and no tortoise-shell tail waved a greeting from the top of fence or shed.
“Biddy, have you seen Weejums?” she asked, coming into the kitchen.
“Shure, I have, and a very foine cat she is, barrin’ her swate voice.”