CHAPTER XII
WEDDING-BELLS AND BRIEF FAREWELLS
There’s nothing harder than deciding on how to have a good time when one deliberately sets out to have one. A good time seems to be a fine sort of thief, which must come upon one unawares and steal away heaviness of heart.
Having made up their minds to giving back Ban-Ban and Kiku-san to Rob and Lois, except for the weekly visit to Purrington which all four had pledged themselves to make, and having resolved on having the very best kind of time until the close of that day when their guests and the beloved cats started for their first home, the Purrers did not know how to begin having it. They were in danger of standing around discussing what to do instead of pitching into the good time without delay, just as children sometimes do, when something happened.
Down the road that led to Purrington two dots were seen moving nearer. When they had come decidedly nearer the two dots turned into two cats hurrying along. One was snowy white, as the sunshine revealed, and the other was a Maltese.
“Here come your doubles, Ban and Kiku!” cried Bidelia.
“Had often sat on a big volume of Shakespeare.”
The Purrers were quite used by this time to the arrival of strangers coming out from the human city to seek the peace and safety of Purrington, but this pair looked very different from most of the arrivals. The refugees who joined the Purrers were more than likely to come with “lean and hungry look,” like Cassius. Indeed Tommy Traddles, who had often sat on a big volume of Shakespeare during his youth, and who thus had learned to know the poet well, named one of these strangers Cassius for that reason. But this pair of cats arriving now were glossy, sleek, plump, and most elegant to behold, and the Purrers wondered at them as they waved their paws, making them welcome and signalling them to enter the gates of the city.