Prince Coco yawned and stretched himself. “Well, now we’ll have some peace and quiet, with Tommy out of the house!” he said.
That made me so mad I growled and flew at him, but James turned back and said, “Here! Here! None of that! What’s the matter with you, Muffins, anyway?”
Coco didn’t say anything more about Tommy after that. He was afraid to.
He may have liked having the house so quiet, but I didn’t. I was so lonesome without Tommy that I hardly knew what to do with myself. But then he had said he would be back soon. And he had told James to take good care of me, so it was all nonsense about their sending me away and my not being there when Tommy came home again.
V
I WAS up in Tommy’s room lying under the bed with one of his shoes in my mouth. It was one of his school shoes. I had dragged it out of the closet one day when Mary left the door open. I didn’t feel so lonesome when I had it in my mouth. He had been gone for several days now.
Well, I was lying there, and sometimes I chewed the top of the shoe and sometimes I just held it, and then I heard James whistling and calling me.
I wondered what he wanted, so I left the shoe under the bed where it was safe and ran down to see.