“A little better. Her sister came over from Millport this morning, so I felt that I could leave. Mercy, child, I didn’t know you could bake!”
“Well, of course, it isn’t as good as yours,” Eve began modestly.
Aunt Cal picked up her bag and started for the stairs. It was this moment that Daisy June took to wake from her nap. With a sinking heart, I felt her between my ankles. Aunt Cal stopped dead in the middle of the room. “Where,” she inquired in a very stuffy voice, “did that come from? And where is Adam?”
I swallowed. “Adam’s visiting—visiting Captain Trout,” I said.
My relative’s face became stonier than before. “Take that cat out of the house!” she ordered.
I took a deep breath and counted ten. Then picking up Daisy June, I retreated to the side yard. Eve joined me there presently, carrying the box of carpet rags we were sewing for Aunt Cal. “Eve,” I asked solemnly, “what is to become of her?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I can’t believe that anything so adorable wasn’t brought into the world for a purpose.”
We didn’t get much sewing done that morning for practically every time we picked up a strip of cloth Daisy June was dangling on the end of it and as fast as Eve wound the balls, the kitten unwound them. When we went in for dinner, we left her sleeping peacefully in the box. She at any rate had no misgivings about the future.
“I see somebody has been trampling the petunia bed,” remarked Aunt Cal, dishing out lamb stew and dumplings. “But I suppose it’s no more than is to be expected when one leaves things to take care of themselves!”
It was Eve who persuaded my aunt to go upstairs after dinner for a rest. “After being up all night,” she urged, “it’s the only sensible thing to do.” And though Aunt Cal declared stoutly that she did not hold with naps in the daytime, she finally yielded.