“Dix Martin, Topsy’s done gone and had kittens. Oh-ee, do look! Isn’t it a little beauty? It’s black, like its mamma, but its spots are white.”
Topsy, holding her tail proudly erect, placed the wee pussy at Dixie’s feet, then looked up in a manner that seemed to say, “There now, what do you think of that for a baby?”
Dixie lifted the soft cuddly little thing, and was about to tell the happy mother that it was indeed a darling, when, with a queer little short meow, the cat again turned and trotted off toward the shed, to soon reappear with another wee pussy, but this one was as white as the driven snow.
“Oh-h!” the two girls breathed a long sigh of admiration, for never had there been a lovelier pussy, they were sure. Just then Ken, with an ax over his shoulder, appeared from the mountain-trail, whither he had been to cut wood for their winter fires.
“What you-all got there?” he called. And when he saw that they were beckoning excitedly, he threw his axe to the ground and ran toward them.
“Gee whiz! Aren’t they beauts?” the boy exclaimed with genuine admiration. “They’re ’most as handsome as my little pig,” he added teasingly.
“Why, Ken Martin, little pigs aren’t warm and soft and cuddly, nor baby goats, either,” Carol began, when Dixie interrupted, the light of inspiration in her thin, freckled face.
“Oh, Caroly, you’ve always wished you had a white pussy, and so you may have this one all for your very own, and Ken can have the other.”
“Me?” the boy exclaimed wide-eyed. “I don’t want a cat. They’re pets for girls.”
“Well, maybe that’s so. Girls like cuddly things.” Then, to the mother puss, Dixie said: “Well, Topsy-cat, we’re ever so glad that you have such nice babies, and won’t Jimmy-Boy be pleased when he wakes up, but now I must get back to my work, for this is wash-day. I want to get through as soon as ever I can, for something—oh, so interesting!—is going to happen this very afternoon. I am to go up to teacher’s to have a lesson.”