There was a howl, higher and more blood-curdling than any that had heretofore assailed their ears. One big cat scrambled up the wall, and up the window panes, seeking an exit. One of the creature's legs dragged limply.
"Olga Cedarstrom!" shrieked Janice, "you have broken that poor cat's leg."
"I bane break all his legs!" rejoined this quite ferocious girl.
"How dese cats coom here? I bane sure you know!"
She turned to glare at Janice Day so savagely, a lump of coal poised in her smutted hand, that the girl was really frightened. She backed away from the angry woman.
Then she thought of something she might do to save the cats and the back kitchen from complete wreck. Janice darted out of the room to the porch. In a moment she had unlatched the summer-kitchen door and flung it wide open.
Instantly there boiled out of the room cats big and cats little, cats of all colors and every degree of fright. One of the last to escape was the poor cat with the broken leg. There was nothing Janice Day could do for it. She did not dare to try to touch it.
She ventured back into the house to find Olga Cedarstrom still breathing out threatenings and slaughter. Olga was in her nightgown and a wrapper. She had not even stopped for slippers when she came from her bed. Now she padded to the back stairs, turning to shake her clenched fist at Janice and cry:
"I leave! I leave! I bane going to pack my troonk. The man pay me oop to last night, and I leave!"
"I am glad of it!" gasped Janice, finding her voice again. "It wasn't my fault, and it wasn't the poor cats' fault. I am glad you are going, so there!"
But she became more serious as she prepared the nice breakfast she had promised herself the night before her father should have. She heard Olga go to the telephone in the hall. She called a number and then talked in Swedish for several minutes to whoever answered.