Twaddles was eager to help and he forgot the lunch. He stood back of Meg and they both began to pull. Poots meowed sadly as 165 she felt herself rising and Bobby and Dot shouted to the pullers to “hurry up.”
“Poots will jump out in a minute,” warned Bobby.
Twaddles’ foot slipped on the soft hay and he went down, slackening his hold on the rope as he fell. Meg turned to see what had happened to him, let the rope sag, and the basket fell a foot or two with sickening speed.
This was too much for any self-respecting cat and with a wild snarl Poots leaped clear over the heads of Bobby and Dot. The angry cat landed on his feet on the barn floor ten feet away, and dashed out into the rain. Getting his fur coat soaking wet was preferable to being hoisted about in a basket, he seemed to say.
“What did you do to Poots?” called Jud. “When he went out of that door, his tail was two feet around!”
“We were only playing with him,” Bobby said. “But maybe he didn’t like it much.”
“If you have time to play with the cat, you have time to help me,” declared Jud. “Don’t 166 you and Meg want to come and help me see if this sheller is going to work?”
Bobby and Meg loved to help Jud and they left their game cheerfully, to go to the corncrib. It was attached to the other end of the barn, so they didn’t have to go out in the rain. Jud wanted to watch the machinery he had mended and he asked Meg to turn the crank and Bobby to feed in the ears of corn. They were never allowed to touch the sheller unless some older person was around, for little fingers could get easily nipped in the cog wheels. So they were rather proud to be especially asked to help Jud make it work.
“I thought the twins were coming,” said Jud, absently, bending down to tighten a screw.
“They must have stayed to play with the basket,” Meg replied.