Pretty Polly Perkins

by Ethel Calvert Phillips

‘I have brought each of them a Christmas present, and one for their mother, too,’ said Patty with a happy face. ‘They are mice, little mice made of catnip, and I would like to give them to the kitties now.’

‘You might see whether your present for Patty is dry yet,’ called Aunt Mary after Uncle Charles, as, well wrapped up, he and Patty and the mice set out for the barn.

‘Another present for me? Do let me see it, Uncle Charles,’ begged Patty, all excitement.

So up the narrow barn stairs to the loft went Patty and Uncle Charles and the mice. And there in one corner of the loft stood a cradle, an old-fashioned wooden cradle, made by Uncle Charles for Polly Perkins as soon as Grandmother’s letter telling of the three Polly Perkinses had reached the Farm. It was painted a lovely shade of blue, and though the paint was still a little moist, Uncle Charles believed it would be quite dry by night so that the cradle might be safely carried home.

‘Aunt Mary has made the pillows and sheets and blankets for it,’ said Uncle Charles, setting the cradle aswing. ‘This is the kind of a bed your great-grandmother was put to sleep in, Patty King.’

Then down the stairs went happy Patty and Uncle Charles to see the four new kitties and their mother.

The big gray mother cat was sleepy and plump, but she had the most interesting and lively family of kittens that Patty had ever seen. One was gray, one was black-and-white, one was all white with pale blue eyes, and the last and smallest and liveliest one of all was orange-yellow and white, ‘a tortoise-shell kitten,’ Uncle Charles said it was called.

How the kittens did like their catnip mice! Even their sleepy old mother tossed and boxed her mouse about, and presently ran up and down the length of the barn as lively as any of her lively brood of kittens, who leaped and tumbled and raced about to their hearts’ content and to Patty’s great entertainment.

‘I think they are so excited because this is the first Christmas present they have ever had,’ said Patty to Uncle Charles, as after a peep at the horses and the cows they made their way through the snow back to the house.

Then out came the little pillows and mattress and sheets and blankets for Polly Perkins’s new cradle. And when they had been admired and shown to every one, and to Polly Perkins, too, it was dinner-time.