After we had finished the dishes Eve carried out a saucer of milk for Daisy June. To our dismay the kitten was gone. There was her bed of carpet rags, still matted where her soft form had lain, but no sign of its late occupant. We searched every corner of the yard, calling softly so that Aunt Cal would not hear. But neither the yard nor garden yielded any trace of her.
Could she have got through the hedge, I wondered? I went to look. And there she was, big as life, sauntering up the path toward the Captain’s back door. I beckoned to Eve. “Look,” I whispered, “for all the world as if she was about to drop in on a friend for tea or something!”
I was about to pop through the hedge after her when the back door of the house opened and the owner himself emerged. He was jauntily dressed in immaculate white trousers and a nautical blue jacket. I wondered how he managed, living alone as he did, always to look so spick and span. He was descending the steps when he met the kitten. “Bless my boots!” The words floated across the quiet air. “Now where in blazes did you come from?”
Daisy June’s answer was to leap up the intervening step and begin her accustomed twining movement about the Captain’s ankle. I hurried forward. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I began, “we do have such trouble with our cats!”
Daisy June continued to twine like a boa constrictor. The Captain retreated and abruptly sat down in the big rocker which occupied the center of the porch. Without hesitation the kitten jumped into his lap. I thought for a second that he was going to push her down, but instead he asked abruptly, “How’s your aunt this morning? Much upset, was she?”
I collected my thoughts. “Oh, you mean about Adam,” I was beginning, when Eve came up behind me. “Aunt Cal wouldn’t allow herself to be upset by so little a thing as that,” she said with one of her dazzling smiles. “She’s much too—a—strong-minded.”
The Captain appeared as surprised as I was to hear this. “Well, well, well,” he said, “I want to know!” Mechanically, it seemed, his hand went out to stroke the kitten’s back and, thus encouraged, she reached up one fat paw for the large gold chain that spanned his waistcoat. “Hi, there, look at that now! Caliph allus used to go after that chain when he was a kitten. Well,” he added, “I’m glad to hear your aunt wasn’t upset. Old Judd Craven allus did say she was the only sensible one in the family!”
“Judd Craven?” I repeated. “Who was he?”
“What? What’s that? Mean to say you ain’t never heard of Cap’n Judd? Why, he was related to you in a sort of way.”
“Related to me? But how? Do you mean that he was related to Aunt Cal?”