“I’ll catch him,” cried Joel, tumbling off from his seat and down over the wheel, followed by Davie, who never stopped to think of what had seemed to him before to be a dangerous proceeding, and racing after Joel’s heels, both boys were soon over the stone wall.
“They’ll scare him worse,” cried Mrs. Sprigg, now down by the side of the road, and in a thicket of straggling blackberry bushes, and she wrung her hands.
“Plague take your old cat!” exclaimed Mr. Tisbett, in a panic over the boys. “Come back here—your Ma won’t like it,” he shouted, but he might as well have saved his voice, for it was carried off by the wind long before it could reach the two little flying figures, as they dashed up to the edge of a clump of bushes. But just here the unexpected happened—the cat with long leaps was making her way within the thicket, when a dog running through the bushes came face to face with her, nearly knocking her over, and Joel, seizing that instant, had her, though kicking and struggling dreadfully, held fast in his arms.
“I’ve got her—I’ve got her!” he yelled clear across the field, his black eyes shining in triumph, and running as fast as he could for her kicking and clawing, Davie stumbling along by his side, begging him to let her go, and wild with fright as he saw a long bloody scratch on one of the little brown hands.
“No, sir—ee!” declared Joel; “there, now, I’ve got your other old hind leg,” this to the cat, and gathering up the long paws with a good grip. “You can’t scratch me any more,” and presently he somehow got over the stone wall.
“Now give that pesky animal to me,” commanded Mr. Tisbett. So Joel, although he much preferred to put the cat himself into the basket, was obliged to hand it over and stand quietly by, while it was crammed into its prison. And then Mr. Tisbett remarking—“We won’t have no more stoppings out of this stage till you get to Cherryville,” produced a rope from underneath the seat and securely tied on the cover, making it fast with a generous number of knots, and no one but Davie took any notice of Joel’s bloody little hands.
It wasn’t till they got to Cherryville and stopped at the Inn for dinner, Mrs. Sprigg and her cat and her bandbox having been dropped at “Eliza’s,” that the old gentleman as soon as he was helped up to the long piazza to sink down in one of the big chairs, said, “Hey, look at that boy,” and he rapped on the floor with his crutch; then pointed to Joel.
Joel put his hands behind his little blue cotton blouse. He had wiped them pretty clean, but couldn’t succeed in getting off all the dingy stains.
Mrs. Christy, the landlady, was bustling in the doorway, preparatory to ringing the big dinner-bell. “What’s that?” she said, peering at Joel.
“Nothing,” he tried to say, squirming worse than ever. But little Davie piped out, “It was the cat.”