“No, but have you seen her since dinner? Biddy, please don’t tease.”
“Well, I gave her some dinner at two, and she left my prisence directly afterwards, without so much as sayin’ ‛thank you,’ and wint for a sthroll.”
“Then she hasn’t come home! Oh, Mother, do you suppose anything’s happened to her?”
Mrs. Wood went back to the parlor to ask Franklin if he had seen anything of Weejums, and Franklin told her the whole miserable story, or nearly the whole; for of course the children came running in to interrupt.
“Don’t tell Eunice,” his mother said quickly. “It would make it so much harder if she thought you had anything to do with it.”
So Franklin did not tell, but he never liked to think afterwards of those days that followed. Eunice went around with a white face; while Kenneth tore his clothes to shreds crawling about under barns and fences. The loss of Stamper had been sad, of course, for rabbits are both desirable and attractive, but Weejums was one of the family.
The kittens had to be fed with a spoon, and gave furious strangled howls, as the milk was poured into them.
“A LITTLE GIRL’S YOUNG MOTHER CAT”
Eunice wrote out an advertisement to be put in the paper: