“When you look up at a rat’s chin, it’s weak,” Franklin said; “they must have been made to be seen from above.”
Weejums left her two new little kittens, Mustard and Elijah, to come and examine the latest arrivals. They were rats, she decided,—her nose told her that much,—but so pale and peculiar! She wondered if pink eyes would taste any better than black; but several smart cuffs on the ears persuaded her that pink eyes were meant only to look at, so she walked off very stiffly, and sat down “back-to.”
School was closed now, and Kenneth played with his new pets nearly all the time. They grew so tame that he could put them down to run on the floor, and catch them again quite easily.
But one day, before the family started for their cottage at the lake, one of the rats disappeared.
“I think he’s got into the wall,” Kenneth said; “’cause I heard him scratching round in there when I went to bed. Do you s’pose he’ll starve to death, Mother? There won’t be much to eat after we go.”
But Mrs. Wood said that she did not think there was any danger of Snowdrop’s starving, or even feeling hungry where he had gone, because, although she never told the children, she knew where that place was.
She and Biddy were sitting up late the night before, finishing the packing, when they heard some one in the kitchen say, “O-ow, yerr-or-wow-wow-O-wow!” and Mrs. Wood recognized the voice of her tortoise-shell grandchild,—the reserved and haughty Weejums. She went out to see what was the matter, and found the cat writhing in what appeared to be agonies of stomach-ache. “So that’s where he went!” she said, rubbing the last resting-place of Snowdrop with tender care. Castor-oil and a hot-water bag followed, and the next day Weejums was fit to travel. But as long as she lived, the sight of a white rat was to her, what the memories of watermelon and strawberries are to certain people after a sea-voyage.
Weejums travelled in a separate basket, with Mustard and Elijah, and as a new home had been found for Minoose, there was only one other basket of cats to go to the lake.
Minoose had gone to the principal of the children’s school, accompanied by his plush mouse, and she had immediately become as foolish over him as any one could have desired. Soon after leaving home he sent a beautiful set of jewelry to Weejums—locket, chain, and earrings—of the kind that comes mounted on a card at the toy-shops, for twenty-five cents. Weejums looked lovely in the locket, but as her ears had never been pierced, she was obliged to use the earrings as tail clasps.
She wore them to the lake, and Clytie and Ivanhoe wore bright worsted collars made on a “knitter,”—Ivanhoe’s red, and Clytie’s light blue. Clytie, being fair, usually wore blue, although pale green was almost equally becoming; and this being a great occasion, Ivanhoe was allowed to wear his toy watch, and the glass lion’s-head stickpin that had come in a penny prize package.