All the cats raised such a yowl of delight that if there had been any human being within hearing he would certainly have thought that some awful thing had happened to all the cats in the world at once. But it was merely keen pleasure that such a fashionable-sounding, yet happy, homelike, catified name had been hit upon by Bidelia, whom they now felt surer than ever must secretly be a successful author.
“Purrington by all means,” said Tommy Traddles, with the grave approval of a great scholar. “I should suggest that we also give this stream a name, and call it the Meuse. Purrington-on-the-Meuse will be a delightful heading for our note-paper.”
“Mews! Yes, that is a nice name for our river,” said Madam Laura. “Yet I don’t like, don’t quite like, calling the river after mews only. We are often so unhappy when we mew!”
“My dear lady,” said Doctor Traddles,—Tommy Traddles had been honoured with the title of Doctor of Claws by a feline college,—“we are not calling it after our own mews; we do not spell it that way. This is M-E-U-S-E, not M-E-W-S, and there is a river with that name in France. I confess I had the double sound of the word in my mind when I suggested the name, however.”
“How did you become so learned, Tommy?” sighed Madam Laura, much impressed.
“I used to sit on a dictionary a great deal of the time while I was growing,” said Thomas Traddles. “I then lived with a student of law, and I absorbed learning, and especially a knowledge of words, by sitting, and even napping, on his dictionary.”
“We are going to live in Purrington-on-the-Meuse!” cried Ban-Ban, with a flirt of his tail. “Wutz-Butz, bring your red flannel over here. Those kittens must be put to bed. Kiku-san, will you let Dolly Varden and Puttel sleep with you in your crocheted shawl, while Nugget curls up with Wutz-Butz in this red flannel?”
Before Kiku-san could reply, Bidelia started to say that she must keep her children with her, and Wutz-Butz to say that he intended to watch all that night with ’Clipsy and some others of the stranger cats; but nobody could hear a word that either of them said, for all three kittens set up a perfectly deafening trio of miaous:
“We want mamma, we want mamma; we won’t sleep with Y-O-U-U-U!” they shrieked.
“Oh, dear,” sighed Bidelia, “they are so tired you must pardon them! My darlings, you are going to sleep with mamma; please, please be quiet.” And she gave three hasty but tender licks down the noses of each of them, which quieted the kittens and comforted them.