"It's got to be a new picture! It's got to be something you've seen yourself! The most beautifulest! The most darlingest thing that you've ever seen! Go out in the field I say! Go out in the woods! Go up on the mountain top! And look around! Nobody I tell you can ever make another person see anything that he hasn't seen himself! Now be gone!" said the Blinded Lady. "I'm all tuckered out!"
"Why I'm sure," said my Father, "we never would have come at all if we hadn't supposed that——."
The Blinded Lady shook her cane right at my Father.
"Don't be stuffy!" she said. "But get out!"
We got out.
Old Mary who washed and ironed and cooked for the Blinded Lady showed us the shortest way out. The shortest way out was through the wood-shed. There were twenty-seven little white bowls of milk on the wood-shed floor. There was a cat at each bowl. It sounded lappy! Some of the cats were black. Some of the cats were gray. Some of the cats were white.
There was an old tortoise-shell cat. He had a crumpled ear. He had a great scar across his nose. He had a broken leg that had mended crooked.
Most of the cats were tortoise-shell and black and gray and white! It looked pretty! It looked something the way a rainbow would look if it was fur! And splashed with milk instead of water!
"How many quarts does it take?" said my Mother.
"Quarts?" said Old Mary. She sniffed. "Quarts? It takes a whole Jersey cow!"