“Lard save us!” cried Milly; “however did ’e come by this here cat, Mrs. Veale? I had Mr. Oldreive’s own sacred word as he’d shutt un dead an’ buried un onder his apple tree.”
“That’s our butivul puss; an’ you should knaw how us come by it if anybody do, my dear, for you bringed it here in a basket from Postbridge when you was a li’l maid six year agone.”
Milly’s active mind was working too rapidly to allow of any reply for some moments. Then she told Mrs. Veale of the recent tribulation at home, and in ten minutes an obvious plot was hatched between them.
“’Tis a peace-loving cat, an’ if you butter its paws an’ treat it a bit generous in the matter of food, ’twill very likely settle down along with you. Of course, you shall have un for such a Christian purpose as to bring them two dear auld men together again. An’ the more cheese you can spare un, the more like he is to bide with you.”
So Mrs. Veale; and Milly answered:—
“‘Corban’ was fond o’ cheese, tu, an’ his mother afore him! ’Twas a family failing, no doubt.”
She scanned the cat narrowly and it mistook her attention for admiration, and purred in a soft, guttural, elderly way, and bent itself into a bow against her knee and showed much natural goodness.
“So like t’other as two peas!” declared Milly, not remembering that she had made exactly the same remark when this cat and its late brother were born. “Faither’s sight ban’t strong enough to part ’em if awnly this one behaves well,” she added.
It was decided that the girl should come early on Sunday morning for her tabby peacemaker, and meantime Mr. Oldreive and his son were to be acquainted with the plot. As for Amos, he was an easy man, and had not slain his neighbour’s poaching cat excepting under grave provocation. Ever since the deed he had regretted it, but he had never confessed to the actual crime excepting in the ears of Milly and Ted. Nobody had officially announced the death of his cat to Mr. Sage. Therefore, Milly hoped he would accept the stranger as his own, and suffer peace to return amongst them. The Oldreives, much cowed by Noah’s attitude and frightened by his illness, gladly promised to do all they might for his daughter, and when Sunday came, she started for Princetown after an early breakfast and left her father behind her. He was in better health again, and she noticed, as an unusual circumstance, that he appeared very full of his own affairs upon that morning, and clearly desired her room more than her company.
With a heavy basket she set off homeward by nine o’clock. Inside the wickerwork a new ‘Corban,’ after protesting once or twice at the narrowness of its quarters, curled round nose to tail, abandoned itself to the freaks of chance and digested an ample breakfast.