Aunt Cal.”
“Hurrah!” I cried, seizing the startled Adam from his cushion and beginning to waltz with him about the kitchen.
“You don’t,” remarked Eve, “seem so awfully depressed at the news of Aunt Cal’s suffering friend!”
“I wasn’t thinking of her at all,” I confessed. “I was wondering if we couldn’t make a Welsh rarebit for supper. I’m fed up with beans and fried potatoes.” For some reason Aunt Cal’s note had filled me with a strange exhilaration. The thought of being on our own, if only for a few hours, was exciting. “Why, we won’t even have to wash the dishes if we don’t want to! And we can sit up as late as we please.”
The odor of toasting cheese is delectable at all times. Never have I known it so delicious as it was that night. Adam, too, seemed to find the atmosphere of the kitchen particularly attractive for, even after he had finished his supper of fried fish, he lingered, purring and twining himself about my feet.
“He wants some of the rarebit, I guess,” Eve said, dropping a morsel onto his plate.
Somewhat to my disappointment, Eve elected to wash the dishes as usual. “Better cover up all guilty tracks,” she laughed.
But we soon had them out of the way and after everything was in order again, we went out into the soft, sweet smelling dusk, the cat at our heels. There is a little bench under the locust tree where we had formed the habit of sitting in the evening and watching Adam at his capers. For, while in the daytime, he is staid and dignified in the extreme, in the evening he loosens up considerably and, given a toad or a grasshopper, will cavort with mild abandon up and down the garden path and beds. But we were always cautioned by Aunt Cal to keep our eyes on him and be sure that he did not stray beyond the hedge into her neighbor’s domain.
Tonight the rarebit or something seemed to have made him unusually lively. He darted about quite wildly and even in one moment of abandon so far forgot his years as to chase his tail. “It’s because Aunt Cal’s away,” I said. “I know just how he feels.”
Eve was lying on her back, trying to find Jupiter. “I wish we could think of something exciting to do,” I said.