When we got up-stairs we all went under Mary's bed, even Slyboots and Aunt Tabby joined us.
Then while I licked Serena and rubbed her down, Joker talked about the fight. For half an hour it was interesting, then it got to be monotonous. It hadn't been much of a fight, and Serena was more frightened than hurt, but Joker went over and over the particulars. How he had been under the Siberian crab-apple tree looking down the road, how he saw Blizzard slinking by but suspected nothing, how he had heard a yell in a voice that was unfamiliar—which voice was Serena's, and so on.
Serena went to sleep at last, but Slyboots sat like a statue staring at him and saying nothing.
Aunt Tabby did not speak either, but she was quietly excited. However, she seemed to realize that we were being bored to death, and she coaxed Joker out in the hall where we heard him going over the same old thing.
“Slyboots,” I said suddenly, “are you hurt?”
“A little mite,” she said calmly.
I went closer. “Why, the tip of your ear is bitten off,” I said.
“It was Thummie the barn cat that did that,” she remarked coolly.
“How did it happen?”
“I went in looking for mice, and he hopped at me.”