The canary was so good-natured that Mrs. Polly was rather ashamed of her ill-temper, and gave a sneeze and cough to hide her embarrassment.
“Well,” she said, after a pause, “perhaps that’s as good a way as any other. I did think of yelling to make her think I’d got my head caught between the wires, but Posy doesn’t like to hear such a noise. You go ’round to the kitchen door,” she said to the barn-cat; “and when Hannah leaves the kitchen you just dart in, seize your kitten, and run off with it.”
The barn-cat hardly waited to hear the last words, and ran around to the kitchen door. She had hardly arrived there when she heard Polly call “Hannah!” so exactly like Mrs. Winton that Hannah dropped the broom with which she was sweeping the floor, and answering, “Yes, ma’am,” hurried into the dining-room.
In darted the barn-cat, caught up her darling in her mouth, and had it back in her own nest in the barn before Hannah had discovered how Polly had “fooled” her, as she called it.
But when the house-cat came home from her visit, imagine what was her surprise and grief to find one of her babies gone!
“That barn-cat!” she exclaimed, “I believe she has stolen it because it’s so much prettier than her common-looking babies. She was always as jealous as she could be of them!” and out to the barn went the house-cat.
“I never visited her before,” she said to herself, “she’s so countrified in her ways and lives in a barn; but I must see if she’s got my baby.”
The barn-cat knew what she was coming for as soon as she caught sight of her.
“I want my kitten,” said the house-cat, going up to the box; and she stepped very daintily and held her head very high, as if she were afraid of soiling her shining fur. “I should think you’d be ashamed of yourself to slink into the house and steal my kitten! But I don’t suppose you know any better, as you’ve never been used to good society.”
“I didn’t steal your kitten! I don’t want your old kitten; it isn’t half so smart or pretty as mine are.”