“Then I had better set to work at once to sort out my toys and begin to pack, I suppose,” said Loveday, in a tone of great importance, “or I am sure I shall never be ready in time.”
CHAPTER VII
LOVEDAY GOES VISITING
BUT though she began her packing at once, and went on with it most industriously for the two following days, yet, when Thursday morning came, she was not, according to her own accounts, nearly ready.
There really was a great deal to be done. First of all she had to find a basket in which to pack her cat, “Mrs. Peters,” and her three kittens, for until that was done she could not make any other plans or attend to anything else.
Fortunately, however, she found at once a nice shiny hat-box, with a leather handle and a lock and key, which would just hold the Peters family, for the kittens were quite tiny. “I will pack all my white flannel petticoats in the bottom of it,” she said to herself, “for they will be nice for Mrs. Peters and the kittens to lie on, and it will be a good thing to get the petticoats in out of the way.”
So in went the petticoats, and then the kittens, but Mrs. Peters was out, and had to be waited for. She came in, though, in such good time that she and her family and the petticoats were packed and locked and strapped up long before Loveday’s dinner-time came; and what would have been the end of the poor kittens and their mother if their own dinner-time had not come very soon, and Nurse had not come in search of them to feed them, no one can imagine, for the box had no ventilation holes, and the lid shut down quite close.
If Mrs. Peters and the kittens suffered, though, Loveday suffered too; for Nurse was so angry when she saw the petticoats in the box with the cats, that she ordered Loveday to sit down and pick off from them every single hair that the cats had left behind, and they had left so many that to Loveday it seemed a marvel that they were not all quite bald. She did not get rid of quite all the hairs, though, for by tea-time her eyes were so swelled and smarting with crying, she was excused the rest, after promising never, never to do such a thing again.
“Don’t you think, dear, that you had better leave Mrs. Peters and her family behind?” suggested her mother, when Loveday, after ransacking the whole house, had found a basket to take the place of the hat-box.