"You know, James," said Eliza, ashamed of her anxiety, but nevertheless too much affected by it to seek her pillow while her pet was homeless, "you know it's places, not people, with a cat, selfish critters."
"Well," responded the captain, "he can't get back to New York 'cause the walkin' 's so poor." As he spoke, a dark shadow passed into the light that streamed from the window.
With the quickest movement of her life, Eliza jumped off the doorstep and pounced upon it. It was Pluto, and she held him under her arm with a vice-like grip as she reëntered the house.
"Good-night, all," she said, rather shamefaced.
"Good-night, Eliza," said Mrs. Wright, who had taken up a book. "Your lamp is lighted."
When Eliza had reached her room, she closed the door and dropped the cat, who leaped toward it, and finding exit hopeless, looked up at her, night-fires gleaming in his eyes.
"See here, Pluto," said Eliza severely, "will you stop actin' so crazy? I tell you we're home; home. If ever two folks ought to be filled to the brim with gratitude it's you and me. I'll give you a chance to look around here in daylight and get your bearin's, and then, if you don't behave as if you had some sense, I'll put you in the chicken-house and you shall live there. Do you hear that?"
She stooped to smooth the jetty fur to offset in a measure her severity; but Pluto glided from beneath her hand and took refuge beneath the bed.
"Well, of all the fools!" she soliloquized. Nevertheless she knew what the temperature of the room would be by the small hours, and, taking an old knitted grey shawl from her trunk, she threw it under the bed.