"Are they all right, Billy?" I cried.
"Yes, Miss Tats. Congress is just as gentle as can be when you let him alone. They go splendidly, except when Roosevelt butts. You know he is always butting into Congress and making trouble."
At that I understood, for Jimmie deliberately rolled on the grass.
"I noticed that peculiarity of the goats," he gasped, when he could speak, "but if I had trained that child a month, he couldn't have put it better. It's—it's simply too good to be true!"
Then he went away to explain the joke to Lady Mary.
I think Bee enjoyed the house-party in spite of its gardening flavour, for we entertained quite a little. At another time I gave a musicale, and had people out from town; we were invited about while automobiles snorted and chunked into Peach Orchard at all hours of the day to the everlasting terror of the cats, who streaked by us and flashed up trees in simple lines of long gray fur.
It was strange how the cat family resembled human beings, for it was the young cats, Puffy and Pinkie and Fitz and Corbett, who got used to the automobiles first, and ceased to run at their approach. Youth is ever progressive and adaptable, while poor old Mitnick crouched in the fork of a high pine, and glared with her yellow eyes and waved her great tail in furious revolt at those puffing, snorting monsters which she never could abide anyway,—and she was glad she couldn't.
We had no automobile, but the sorrels were there in the height of their glory and slimness, and we still basked in the refulgence of the coachman and footman of Bee's own selection, so her soul was at peace.
Only one thing happened to mar our pleasure. Jimmie fell ill.
Mrs. Jimmie hunted me up one blistering morning, and said, anxiously: