"Very well, sir," said Jim. "I will set about it at once."
"Beg or buy them," laughed Mr. Connor. "I'll pay for them, if I can't get them any other way. There is room in the woodpile for fifty to live."
Jim did not much like the idea of having such an army of cats about; but he went faithfully to work; and in a few weeks he had seventeen. One morning, when they were all gathered together to be fed, he called Mr. Connor to look at them.
"Do you think there are enough, sir?" he said.
"Goodness! Jim," cried Mr. Connor, "what did you get so many for? We shall be overrun."
Jim laughed. "I'm three short yet, sir, of the number you ordered," he said. "There are only seventeen in that batch."
"Only seventeen! You are joking, Jim," cried Mr. Connor; and he tried to count; but the cats were in such a scrambling mass, he could not count them.
"I give it up, Jim," he said at last. "But are there really only seventeen?"
"That's all, sir, and it takes quite a lot of meat to give them all a bite of a morning. I think here are enough to begin with, unless you have set your heart, sir, on having twenty. Mexican has got six kittens, you know, and they will be big enough to hunt before long. That will make twenty-three."