She felt certain that he was only foolish, like some human children whom she had known, who thought it proved them quite grown up if only they were saucy and unmannerly, and she knew that the change in Nugget came from the bad example of Scamp, whose naughtiness was of a much more serious sort than Nugget’s had yet become.
She could not take Nugget out of school, away from Scamp altogether, as she would have liked to do, because she was too busy to teach him herself, and he was getting on beyond anything. Tommy Traddles said that Nugget was one of his best scholars, that he could subtract three tails from seven mice, and seven mice from eleven rats, all in his head as quick as a cat could wink. And that he knew the tables of jumps and pounces better than any one else in the school, and could tell in a twinkling how many jumps made one good pounce. In grammar he led his class, being able to tell in what case every mew noun was the moment he heard it, and he could decline purring verbs in the passive voice, or spitting verbs in the active voice in a way that delighted his teacher’s heart, for Doctor Traddles was particularly fond of grammar.
So Nugget went to school every day, and thus saw Scamp constantly. Scamp sought Nugget’s society more than any other kitten there; he seemed to take a fancy to the quick-witted little yellow fellow, and perhaps liked to lead a good kitten into paths of naughtiness—there are many with that sort of taste.
One day Scamp spoke to Nugget as they met in the schoolroom doorway, after recess.
“Come with me to-night,” he said. “I’m going fishing in the Meuse, and we’ll have fun. Bring some bait; I scratched up worms in our garden.”
“I don’t have to have worms for bait,” said Nugget, proudly. “I learned how to fish with just my paw. I guess I can’t go, though.”
Now Scamp knew that Nugget had been taught to fish with his paw, and that was why he particularly wanted him to go fishing that evening. But this he would not own, so he said: “Why can’t you? There won’t be any one but just us two. We’ll have fun, I tell you.”
“My mother won’t let me——” began Nugget, but stopped himself, ashamed to say that he could not go for that reason, though there could hardly have been a better one.
“Before I’d be tied to my mammy’s tail! Cry-kitten, ’fraid-cat!” sneered Scamp.
“My mother says the river is dangerous at night,” said Nugget.