This seemed a good time for me to throw my sensation in among them. “My dear family,” I said impressively, “I have a tremendous piece of news for you. I am to be taken from Boston.”
My mother stopped licking me, and put her head close to mine, as if to listen more attentively.
My father and Serena were immensely impressed, but tried not to show it, while Jimmy Dory took advantage of their abstraction, and crept from under the chair to his former position beside me.
“Go on,” said my father commandingly.
“Well,” I continued, “the Denvilles are going to the country for the summer. I am to be taken with them, also Slyboots, and the dogs, and the birds.”
“What country—where is it?” inquired Jimmy Dory breathlessly.
“To Maine,” I replied, then I was silent, for this was my great stroke.
Maine was the far-distant, fabled country that my father had come from. He had only alluded to it vaguely, for indeed I don't think he remembered much about it, having been only a kitten when he left it. But to us, his kittens, it was a land of dreams, of fair promise, of beauty—in fact, just the kind of place an adventurous little cat would like to visit.
“Oh, cracky!” muttered Jimmy Dory, “I wish I could go too.”
“You would get lost in the woods,” said Serena disdainfully, “and bears would eat you.”