JANE PURDY
Jane was supposed to be the disconsolate widow. She certainly looked the part to perfection; and it never occurred to any of them that a cat, with kittens, could not possibly have left a widow behind her.
The ceremony was most impressive; the bereaved kittens were loud in their grief; when, suddenly, the village-bell tolled for the death of an old gentleman whom everybody loved, and the comedy became a tragedy. The older children were conscience-stricken at the mummery, and they ran, demoralized and shocked, into the house, leaving The Boy and the kittens behind them. Jane Purdy tripped over her veil, and one of the kittens was stepped on in the crush. But The Boy proceeded with the funeral.
When The Boy got as far as a room of his own, papered with scenes from circus-posters, and peopled by tin soldiers, he used to play that his bed was the barge Mayflower, running from Barrytown to the [p 44]
foot of Jay Street, North River, and that he was her captain and crew. She made nightly trips between the two ports; and by day, when she was not tied up to the door-knob—which was Barrytown—she was moored to the handle of the wash-stand drawer—which was the dock at New York. She never was wrecked, and she never ran aground; but great was the excitement of The Boy when, as not infrequently was the case, on occasions of sweeping, Hannah, the up-stairs girl, set her adrift.
The Mayflower was seriously damaged by fire once, owing to the careless use, by a deck-hand, of a piece of punk on the night before the Fourth of July; this same deck-hand being nearly blown up early the very next morning by a bunch of fire-crackers which went off—by themselves—in his lap. He did not know, for a second or two, whether the barge had burst her boiler or had been struck by lightning!
JOE STUART