"Eh?" he exclaimed, looking over his spectacles. "Oh, it's you! Sakes alive, child, how do you get around so quiet? Haven't borrowed the cat's feet to walk, on, have you?"
Babbie laughed again and replied that she guessed the cat wouldn't lend her feet.
"She would want 'em herself, prob'ly, Uncle Jed," she added. "Don't you think so?"
Jed appeared to consider.
"Well," he drawled, "she might, I presume likely, be as selfish and unreasonable as all that. But then again she might . . . hum . . . what was it the cat walked on in that story you and I was readin' together a spell ago? That—er—Sure Enough story—you know. By Kipling, 'twas."
"Oh, I know! It wasn't a Sure Enough story; it was a 'Just So' story. And the name of it was 'The Cat Who Walked by His Wild Lone.'"
Jed looked deeply disappointed. "Sho!" he sighed. "I thought 'twas on his wild lone he walked. I was thinkin' that maybe he'd gone walkin' on that for a spell and had lent you his feet. . . . Hum. . . . Dear, dear!
"'Oh, trust and obey,
For there's no other way
To be de-de-de-di-dum—
But to trust and obey.'"
Here he relapsed into another daydream. After waiting for a moment, Babbie ventured to arouse him.
"Uncle Jed," she asked, "what were you doing with those things in your hand—when I came in, you know? That cloth and that piece of paper. You looked so funny, rubbing them together, that I couldn't help laughing."