“Ah, but these two!” murmured Bidelia.
The cats all wiped their eyes with their forepaws. “We consent,” said the Purrers, sobbing, and Dolly Varden put her paws around Lois’s neck.
“I don’t blame them,” said that sweet kitten. “Take me, too!”
“Away from your mother?” asked Kiku-san, not at all minded to have even dear little Dolly share with him Lois’s love.
“Then, since it must be, let us pass the rest of the day as merrily as we can,” said Tommy Traddles. “Let us sing my favourite air—you know it as ‘’Way Down Upon the Swanee River,’ Rob and Lois.”
And then the cats sang the following song:
“When all the little willow catkins
Had run away,
And birch leaves clapped their tiny patkins,
Like summer rain at play,