“I declare for’t!” he grumbled. “There’s no room to step around this store for the cats. Myra! I can’t stand so many cats—they’re under foot all the time. You’ll have to get rid of some of your pets. It’s making me poor to feed them all, in the first place!”
“Oh, father!” cried Myra. “They keep away the mice, you know.”
“Yes! Sure! They keep away the mice, because there’s so many cats and kittens here, the mice couldn’t crowd in. I tell you I can’t stand it—and there’s that old Sandy-face with four kittens in the basket behind the flour barrels in the back room. Those kittens have got their eyes open. Soon you can’t catch them at all. I tell you, Myra, you’ve got to get rid of them.”
“Sandy-face and all?” wailed Myra, aghast.
“Yes,” declared her father. “That’ll be five of ’em gone in a bunch. Then maybe we can at least count those that are left.”
“Oh, Myra!” cried Agnes. “Give them to us.”
“What?” asked the store-keeper’s girl. “Not the whole five?”
“Yes,” agreed Agnes, recklessly. “Mrs. McCall says we are over-run with mice, and I expect we could feed more than five cats for a long time on the mouse supply of the old Corner House.”
“Goodness! Old Sandy-face is a real nice mother cat——”
“Let’s see her,” proposed Agnes, and followed Myra out into the store-room of the grocery.