“Oh, you baby you,” Jeannette said aloud, blinking through her own distress and eyeing the cat. “You’ve been shut up in here since the day before yesterday and you’re just about starving.”
Mitzi confirmed this with a wail. Jeannette scooped the animal up with a long arm and carried her into the kitchen. It was cold and bleak in here, too, smelling foully of Mitzi’s incarceration.
A groan was wrung from Jeannette’s lips.
In the ice-box she found only a bowl half full of pickled beets, a plate of butter, two rather shrivelled bananas, and a few pieces of dried toast. She clapped the kettle on the stove, lighted the gas, and stood caressing the cat until the water had warmed; then she moistened the toast and set it in a soup plate on the floor.
“Here, you poor critter, eat that until I get you something decent.” Mitzi leaped at the meal, jerking the food into her mouth, growling gluttonously.
Jeannette put her fingers to her head and watched the performance, breathing hard.
“I must,” she said aloud. “It won’t kill me.”
She went into her own room, laid aside her fur coat, put on an old mackintosh and felt hat, once more went out into the rain, and presently dragged herself up the stairs again with a bottle of milk and a bag of provisions.
Her temples throbbing and little streaks of pain darting through her eyeballs, she moved resolutely through the next few minutes. While the kettle was heating, she got herself into her kimona, and braided her hair. Then she returned to the kitchen, mixed a large bowl of bread and milk for the cat, and dutifully made herself tea which she drank, munching between sips some saltine crackers warmed in the oven.
Peace gradually descended upon her. Mitzi, replete and satisfied, licked milk-stained whiskers, and eyed her comfortably from the floor. The pain in Jeannette’s head was less violent, but she was very cold.