“How many I got in to-tal, Missie?” she repeated Ruth’s question. “Lor’ bress yo’! Sometimes I scurce remember dem all. Dere’s two merried an’ moved out o’ town. Den dere’s two mo’ wokin’; das four, ain’t it? Den de good Lor’ sen’ me twins twicet—das mak’ eight, ef my ’rithmetickle am cor-rect. An’ dere’s Alfredia, an’ Jackson, and Burne-Jones Whis’ler Blossom (he done been named by Mis’ Holcomb, de artis’ lady, wot I wok fo’) an’ de baby, an’ Louisa Annette, an’ an’—— Bress de Lor’, Missie, I ’spect das ’bout all.”
Ruth had lost count and could only laugh over the names foistered upon the helpless brown babies. Uncle Rufus “snorted” over the catalog of his daughter’s progeny.
“Huh! dem names don’t mean nuthin’, an’ so I tell her,” he grunted. “But yo’ cyan’t put sense in de head ob a flighty negra-woman—no, Ma’am! She called dem by sech circusy names ’cause dey sounds pretty. Sound an’ no sense! Huh!”
Just now, however, the Corner House girls were more deeply interested in the names of the four kittens, and in keeping them straight (for three were marked almost exactly alike), than they were in the names which had been forced upon the helpless family of Petunia Blossom.
Having already had one lesson in lapping milk from a saucer, the kittens were made to go through the training again after dinner, under the ministrations of Tess and Dot.
Sandy-face, who seemed to have become fairly contented by this time, sat by and watched her offspring coughing and sputtering over the warm milk and finally, deciding that they had had enough, came and drank it all up herself.
Dot was rather inclined to think that this was “piggish” on Sandy’s part.
“I don’t think you’re a bit polite, Sandy,” she said, gravely, to the mother cat while the latter calmly washed her face. “You had your dinner, you know, before Mrs. McCall brought in the milk.”
They all trooped out to see Uncle Rufus establish Sandy and her family for the night in the woodshed. The cat seemed to fancy the nest in the old basket, so they did not change it, and when they left the family, shutting the woodshed door tightly, they supposed Sandy and her children would be safe for the night.
In the morning, however, a surprise awaited Tess and Dot, when they ran out to the shed to see how the kittens were. Sandy-face was sleeping soundly in the basket and Spotty and Petl were crawling all over her. Almira and Bungle had disappeared!