Ban-Ban and Kiku-san, all cats shall bless you,
Lois and Robin again will caress you;
Bravest cats, dearest cats, sleep on your pillows,
Kissed by the winds and the soft pussy-willows.”
Sung to a low, sweet tune, this song proved soothing, and Kiku-san and Ban-Ban fell asleep as soon as it ceased, borne away to dreamland by the rise and fall of many purrs mingling with the murmur of their rippling river Meuse.
CHAPTER III
THE PURRERS OF PURRINGTON
No one can imagine how fast cat carpenters work, for very few indeed have ever seen them work. And so it would be hard to make any one believe how fast Purrington-on-the-Meuse grew. Why, in a week those five cat carpenters had built all the houses which were needed to start with! Of course the other cats helped in all ways that they could, such as bringing boards, laying up bricks, and puttying in windows, but even with this help it was wonderful the way the town grew.
There did not have to be many houses to begin with. There was one big house, rather like a city apartment-house for single gentlemen, in which the stranger cats, all of them unmarried, were to live. Madam Laura offered to keep house for them, because they never could take care of themselves without a lady at the head of their domestic affairs, and there never could be another more fitted in every way to keep house for them than was kind Madam Laura. It was most good of her to do it, however, for being a lady of means, she could have gone off and lived selfishly by herself, without a care in the world.