“Oh, no! Don’t trouble yourself to bring it back. I have plenty more and if you would care to have some and will come up here, I can give you all you can eat.”
“I am sure that sounds most alluring. I’ll be right up if you will tell me how to get there.”
“Wait a minute and I will come down and show you the way.” And before Button expected her, the spotted cat crawled out of a hole from under the barn. Just then the cat saw Stubby for the first time and not knowing he was with Button, he spit and flew at him in a rage and would have scratched his eyes out before Stubby could have defended himself had not Button meowed:
“Don’t touch him. He is my friend and won’t hurt you. He only came over to visit the little puppy while I talked to you.”
The spotted cat apologized most profusely and invited Stubby to join them at their feast of squab up in the hayloft. But when Stubby tried to squeeze through the hole under the barn he could not, so he was forced to stay outside with thoughts of having a whole squab dropped down to him from the loft.
“But how comes it that you have so many squabs to eat at one time?” asked Button.
“It happened in this way. As you know, there is going to be a wedding here this afternoon and these squabs were raised to serve at the wedding feast. But the boxes their nests were made in, up in the pigeon loft just over our heads, broke loose and spilled out all the young squabs and no one knows it but me and the mother pigeons. Haven’t you observed how excited the old pigeons are and how they keep flying in and out of the loft looking for their babies? My, but there will be a terrible commotion at the house when they discover that the squabs are gone. So come ahead and follow me. We must hurry and eat our fill before the people at the house discover their loss.”
CHAPTER VII
WILD EXCITEMENT IN THE BARNYARD
