“Began what?” asked Franklin, astonished.
“Blew her up with the bicycle pump. You see she had sniffles, and couldn’t breathe from the outside, so I thought if she was full enough of air, she could breathe from the inside. You don’t s’pose it hurt her, do you?”
Franklin opened his mouth wrathfully, to tell Kenny what a cruel thing he had done; but seeing how anxious the poor little red-eyed face had become, said instead: “Well, I don’t believe it did her any good, so I wouldn’t try it again, if I were you. But very likely she’d have died anyway. You see she looks quite pale around the nose.”
Eunice and Kenneth had the funeral that afternoon, with Cyclone hitched to the express cart. But it did not end well, because Cyclone got into a fight with another dog, and smashed the cart, and some little street children ran away with the grape-basket, thinking that Bun Grey’s legs were asparagus. So none of the funeral returned but the two chief mourners, who planted some potatoes in the grave that they had dug for Bun Grey.
“You see ’t would be such a pity to waste that nice hole,” Eunice said. “I’m glad it wasn’t Sam.”
Kenneth sniffed again, but said nothing, and Franklin admired him so much for the way in which he bore his loss, that the next day he shook some of his hen-money out of the red bank, and went down-town.
“More rabbits, I suppose,” Mrs. Wood thought patiently, as she began to wrap up dishes to go to the lake.
But it was not rabbits this time, it was worse; and, as usual, it was something that Mrs. Wood had never dreamed of telling him not to get. Guinea-pigs had been discouraged, so they were not guinea-pigs who greeted Kenneth from behind the wire of their little box at breakfast the next morning. No, they were much smaller and more slender, particularly as to tail, of which they possessed half a yard apiece. And they were white and pink-eyed, with what Eunice called “whittle-noses,” and, in other words, they were rats.
“You see they’ll be so handy to carry around,” Franklin said, with a beaming smile. “They’re such small animals.”
And Kenneth’s joy was enough to make one forget even that they were rats. His grief over Bun Grey faded, in the contemplation of those long pink tails. And when he found that their owners would actually run up his arm to his shoulder, and nip his ear, his delight was complete. It was great fun, too, to watch them scramble up and down inside the wire netting. One caught such strange views of their noses and chins.