Cat mothers can feel as well as human mothers, and wasn't my dear one glad to see her kitten come creeping toward her!
She met me half-way, she smelt me and licked me, and her soft, damp nose told a tale. She had heard of my troubles.
They had all heard, for they all got up to receive me. There was no sun in the window this afternoon, but still they were all lying on the broad seat on the cushions.
I was conducted to the place of honor in the middle, and then they all began to talk to me. Father, and Serena, and Jimmy Dory, but mother didn't talk. She just licked.
“How do you feel, eh?” said Jimmy Dory, giving me a rough pat with his paw. “Pretty sore, I guess.”
“How did you hear?” I asked sharply.
“Well, you see,” said Jimmy Dory, “since you went down to Beacon Street, daddy found that he has a cousin living in the house next door to you. She is a white Angora with blue eyes, and she came from Maine when he did. The dog in the house with her is a great gossip—a regular dickens of a fellow.”
Just here Serena interrupted him, and begged him not to swear.
“'Dickens' isn't swearing, is it, daddy?” and my brother appealed to our father.
“It is rough and inelegant talk,” said my parent grandly, “and that is next door to swearing.”