I didn't like the basket, but I wasn't frightened. Soon I heard round me the roar of the street, then the jarring of an electric car. Then, after a good while, I felt that the young man was walking rapidly along another street.
In a few minutes he stopped short, opened one door, then another, and then the noise of the street fell away, and I heard other noises.
“Well, Mr. Green!” a woman's voice exclaimed, “here you are at last. Do give me whatever you have got. Two urgent calls are waiting. One for a mad dog in a yard on Tremont Street, which, of course, means a poor wretch which has been chased till he is foaming at the mouth, and another for a cat and kittens deserted in a cellar on Washington Street—Do hurry.”
I felt some one take the basket and lift the cover.
“Oh! a kitten, and half Angora,” and a pleasant-faced young lady looked down at me. “Well, she must go in the cat-room. Mercy!” and she slightly raised her voice.
I stared about me. I was in a kind of office. There was a large desk and many pictures of animals were on the walls. Then a nice, motherly-looking woman came in, took me up as if I had been a baby, and carried me into a hall, and up some stairs. She talked kindly to me all the way up, and presently she opened the door of a room, put me down gently, paused an instant or two to see what kind of a reception I met with, then went away.
I gazed about me. Where was I? Was it a party? I had never seen so many cats together, not even in the biggest yard congress on Beacon Hill.
The room was large and beautifully neat and clean. Around the walls were boxes and baskets, and in many of them cats lay asleep. Others walked about the room, some ran up to me—mostly young ones—and asked my name and where I came from.
I put up my back at first, but when I saw they were all kindly disposed, I put it down again.
“What is this place?” I asked, sitting down against the door.