“I say, stand a gallon o’ beer afore you go.”
“There’s nobody cares for me but poor Mrs Dodley,” I said to myself in a choking voice, and then my pride gave me strength.
“Very well,” I exclaimed aloud; “if they don’t care, I don’t, and I’m glad I’m going, and I shall be very glad when I’m gone.”
That was not true, for, as I went on, I saw this tree whose pears I had picked, and that apple-tree whose beautiful rosy fruit I had put so carefully into baskets. There were the plum-trees I had learned how to prune and nail, and whose violet and golden fruit I had so often watched ripening. That was where George Day had scrambled over, and I had hung on to his legs, and there—No; I turned away from that path, for there were the two brothers slowly walking along with the cats, looking at the different crops, and I did not want to be seen then by one who was so ready to throw me over, and by the other, who seemed so cold and hard, and was, I felt, going to be a regular tyrant.
“And I’m all alone, and not even a cat to care about me,” I said to myself; and, weak and miserable, the tears came into my eyes as I stopped in one of the cross paths.
I started, and dashed away a tear or two that made me feel like a girl, for just then there was a rustle, and looking round, there was one of Old Brownsmith’s cats coming along the path with curved back, and tail drooped sidewise, and every hair upon it erect till it looked like a drooping plume.
The cat suddenly rushed at me, stopped short, tore round me, and then ran a little way, and crouched, as if about to make a spring upon me, ending by walking up in a very stately way to rub himself against my leg.
“Why, Ginger, old fellow,” I said, “are you come to say good-bye?”
I don’t think the cat understood me, but he looked up, blinked, and uttered a pathetic kind of mew that went to my heart, as I stooped down and lifted him up in my arms to hug him to my breast, where he nestled, purring loudly, and inserting his claws gently into my jacket, and tearing them out, as if the act was satisfactory.
He was an ugly great sandy Tom, with stripes down his sides, but he seemed to me just then to be the handsomest cat I had ever seen, and the best friend I had in the world, and I made a vow that I would ask Old Brownsmith to let me have him to take with me, if his brother would allow me to include him in my belongings.