“No,” responded his mother thoughtfully, “you’re right there. His legs are his weak point. I can’t say I think much of his legs myself.”
“Maybe they’ll fill out later on,” suggested the friend, kindly.
“Oh, I hope so,” replied the mother, regaining her momentarily dashed cheerfulness. “Oh yes, they’ll come all right in time. And then look at his tail. Now, honestly, did you ever see a kitten with a finer tail?”
“Yes, it’s a good tail,” assented the other; “but why do you do it up over his head?”
“I don’t,” answered our cat. “It goes that way. I can’t make it out. I suppose it will come straight as he gets older.”
“It will be awkward if it don’t,” said the friend.
“Oh, but I’m sure it will,” replied our cat. “I must lick it more. It’s a tail that wants a good deal of licking, you can see that.”
And for hours that afternoon, after the other cat had gone, she sat trimming it; and, at the end, when she lifted her paw off it, and it flew back again like a steel spring over the squirrel’s head, she sat and gazed at it with feelings that only those among my readers who have been mothers themselves will be able to comprehend.
“What have I done,” she seemed to say—“what have I done that this trouble should come upon me?”
Jephson roused himself on my completion of this anecdote and sat up.