“She’s a lazy, greedy, ill-mannered brute,” said Tad.
“Dear me,” grinned Watch, “what an awful creature she must be, to hear you tell about her. Let’s have Doctor Muskrat’s opinion.”
“I don’t know anything,” answered the wise old beast, “but I suspect she’s like these white ducks I’ve been hunting with the last few days. They’d be dreadful fools to a wild duck’s way of thinking, but they’ve taught me a lot. Maybe that cat would teach us a lot more. Eh, Watch? What about her?”
“You’re all of you right,” sniffed Watch, thoughtfully cocking one ear. “For the first three months I spent on this farm I don’t think I was ever without one of her claw-marks on me. So I used to hate her. And you’re all of you wrong, too.” He cocked the other ear. “Once she taught me to chase my own rats and gnaw my own bones I learned there isn’t a creature in fur honester or with better manners. She’s friends with nobody, yet I feel mighty friendly toward her. Man-ways or beast-ways, she knows more than all of us put together. She could teach us a lot, but she won’t. Yet if she chose to advise us, without giving a single reason, I’d do exactly what she said and trust her for the rest. She’s clever!”
“Well, Watch,” came a purring voice from nowhere in particular (it was pretty dark by now), “if that’s the way you feel, I’ll tell you this. Be on foot here tomorrow night and you’ll see the last mouse blow to the woods on the sunset wind.” The voice stopped. It certainly was Mrs. Tabitha Puss-cat who had been talking, but crane their necks as they would, nobody could see a sign of her.
Nibble sat down and scratched his collar with his hind foot, he was that puzzled about it. “Well,” he gasped, “what do you s’pose she meant?”
“I don’t know,” Watch answered, “but she must have had a reason of her own.”
“I did,” said the puss-cat voice, and there Mrs. Tabitha stood right beside him, purring. “Until we get these mice cleaned off this farm I want to make a compact with your friends. If they won’t hunt me I won’t hunt them.” She looked specially at Tad Coon.
“By the curl in the bull-frog’s tail.” Tad exclaimed admiringly. “You are a clever one. Oh, mice, what a lot of claws you’ll find a-waiting for you.” Of course the Woodsfolk were willing to be friends.
But the cat hadn’t told all her reason. She knew Killer the Weasel had just crawled into that mouse’s straw-stack. She didn’t want to be the one to fight him when he came out again. And she knew just when and why he was coming. That was a secret, too.