Seizing upon Serena as the most gullible one of the party, he has made a fool of her. Now all the country cats are laughing at us, and our influence is gone.
I knew yesterday that Serena was going mole-hunting with him and Rosy, but I did not know that the mole-hunt was to be preceded by a lecture till this morning, when Joker went round to every cat in the house, even to old Grandma, and informed us with a grinning face, that as soon as it got dark this evening, a lecture on “Felines” would be delivered out behind the barn by the thoroughbred Angora, Serena of Boston.
His grin, when he pronounced the word “thoroughbred,” was so significant, that I at once jumped to the conclusion that he had heard Serena's remarks about herself on our day of arrival, and that he knew she was not pure bred. If he kept the knowledge to himself, all would be well. If he didn't, Serena's reputation for truthfulness was gone.
Well, I did not worry much about this, nor about the lecture. She could speak well enough, if she chose, but I did continue to worry about the mole-hunt.
The day passed somehow or other. Mary and her mother kept on exploring the farm. I went over the house with them. It is a queer house. The lower part is all new and fresh, but the upper part has odd little rooms and windows and dark closets, and funny wall-paper. A bat flew out of one dark closet. These rooms are about eighty years old, Mr. Gleason said. He took us over the house, and he laughed and chuckled when Mary shivered and grew pale in the attic, and kept close to her mother.
“Why, there are no ghosts now, sissy,” he said, “and all these things wouldn't hurt you,” and he waved his hand about at the old-fashioned furniture and extraordinary clothes that fill the rooms in this old part.
Mary said she did not like them, and she was glad when we came down from the attic and Mr. Gleason locked the door behind us.
Through the day a great many men drove up under the trees and up by the carriage-house, or out by the barn to see Mr. Gleason. I heard some of their talk. They were selling horses and cows and all kinds of machines, and they wanted to borrow money or have a talk—no one seemed in a hurry, and Mr. Gleason stood about and talked while they were there, but when they left the work went right on. He had another man working with Denno, and they were very busy, hoeing, and pulling up weeds from the long rows of potatoes and turnips and carrots and all kinds of vegetables in the big field on the south side of the barn.
The veranda was a very pleasant place to lie. No one hurt us cats, and we could see all that was going on. However, Slyboots found a better place, and at dinner time she introduced me to it.
It was an upper veranda over the lower one. Here we could see just as well when we lay on the chairs and looked through the railing, and we were absolutely out of the way, for no one sat on this veranda.