“Catch her—catch her!” screamed the old lady, as Weejums bounded through the hall into the dining-room, and between the feet of a frightened servant, into the kitchen.
“Scat, now—scat!” said the cook, cuffing her off a basket of clean linen into which she had jumped,—without even giving her time to explain that she had stopped there merely to get her breath.
It was against rules for the boarders to come into the kitchen, so Weejums heard the voice of the old lady grow fainter and die away; but she was still angry with the cook for cuffing her, and, spying Mrs. Winslow behind the stove, slapped her soundly on the closed eye. This was too much for Hannah, who loved Mrs. Winslow, and a little dipper of water from the dishpan descended on Weejums’ nose. She stopped to hurl an insult at boarding-houses in general, and bolted for the pantry door.
“Come out of there!” called Hannah, angrily, and in her haste to reach the window, Weejums skipped wildly through a pan of cranberry sauce, terrifying the old rooster in the yard by appearing suddenly before him with red legs. As Weejums had never cared for cranberry sauce, and always refused it on her turkey, it was very trying to have to lap so much of it off her paws, and she had scarcely polished one toe, when for no reason whatever, a boarder upstairs put her head out of the window and called “Scat!” This was entirely uncalled for, as Weejums had done and said nothing; but the lack of sympathy in it disgusted her so much that she slanted back her eyes and ears in the most Chinese of “dignities,” and jerking her tail stiffly, walked out of the place.
She did not know, of course, that the boys across the street were getting up a circus, or she would not have ventured into their yard. But they had always seemed like kind boys, so she was not particularly alarmed when one of them pounced on her and, holding her up, called to the others, “Hi, come and see the red-legged cat!”
“Red-legged cat! Red-legged cat!” they exclaimed in delight, and the biggest one said, “We’ll have her for the side-show. Ten pins admission. Make the sign, Bob.”
So Weejums was carried into a kind of tent made of sheets, where several freshly washed guinea-pigs were whining in their box, and a goat, with a cocked hat on, bore the label of “Only Genuine Bearded Wanderoo—Fresh from Africa.”
“Chain up the Duck-bill Platypus, quick there!” called Bob, as a wretched little street dog jumped and bit vainly at Weejums’ tail.
“Now then, big letters—” he ordered, as the boys began to make the sign, “Like this, I’ll show you: COME AND SEE THE RED-LEGGED—”
But at this point Weejums escaped from under his arm, and having stopped an instant to claw the “Duck-bill Platypus,” departed in great haste from the scene. The boys dropped their sign and followed, but she soon left them behind, and no one who came to the circus ever found out who it was that had red legs.