In a broken hand-basket in which some old clothes had been dropped, Sandy-face had made her children’s cradle. They looked like four spotted, black balls. The old cat herself was with them, and she stretched and yawned, and looked up at the two girls with perfect trust in her speckled countenance.
Her face looked as though salt and pepper, or sand, had been sprinkled upon it. Her body was marked with faint stripes of black and gray, which proved her part “tiger” origin. She was “double-toed” on her front feet, and her paws were big, soft cushions that could unsheath dangerous claws in an instant.
“She ought to be a good mouser,” said Agnes, reflectively. It did look like a big contract to cart five cats home at once!
“But I wouldn’t feel right to separate the family—especially when the kittens are so young,” Myra said. “If your folks will let you take them—well! it would be nice,” she added, for she was a born lover of cats and could not think, without positive pain, of having any of the cunning kittens cut short in their feline careers.
“Oh, Ruth will be glad,” said Agnes, with assurance. “So will Mrs. McCall. We need cats—we just actually need them, Myra.”
“But how will you get them home?” asked the other girl, more practical than the impulsive Agnes.
“Goodness! I hadn’t thought of that,” confessed Agnes.
“You see, cats are funny creatures,” Myra declared. “Sometimes they find their way home again, even if they are carried miles and miles away.”
“But if I take the kittens, too—wouldn’t she stay with her own kittens?”
“Well—p’r’aps. But the thing is, how are you going to carry them all?”