"Yes; but we like our own homes best!" mewed Jazbury.
Yowler was silent for a while. Then suddenly he burst out, "Tell you what! I said I liked it fine at the farm, but I didn't. They treated me mean. Never got a thing to eat but mice and rats, and had to catch everything for myself. They kept me in the barn, too, and if I even so much as poked my nose outside it the dog was after me. Wow! If I'd had a home like you two, catch me leaving it! But some kits have all the luck."
Fluffy and Jazbury felt quite sorry for Yowler. He must indeed have had a very hard time. But then, as Fluffy said to Jazbury later on, if he hadn't been so mean to them and run away and left them, he might have found a good home, too, just as they had, and have stayed there if he had chosen to.
XII
Mother Bunch and Aunt Tabby were sitting on the kitchen steps, feeling very sad.
It was a long time since little Jazbury had run away and left them, but they could not get used to being without him. Bitterly did they miss his fun and his liveliness and all his pretty ways.
"The quickest, strongest, handsomest kitten I ever had," said Mother Bunch.
"If I only hadn't boxed his ears that time," mourned Aunt Tabby, "maybe he wouldn't have run away."
"You mustn't let yourself think that," mewed Mother Bunch. "I guess we were both of us a little hard on him."
Suddenly there was a sound of scratching and scrabbling on the fence between the yard and the lot.