Yet God had sent no sign to her. She folded her hands patiently in her lap. “It will come,” she murmured, with trustful eyes uplifted, “it will come.”
In Prison Lane she heard a mad barking of dogs and the shouting of boys, directly under her window. The excited clamour died away in a few moments. Suddenly her attention was aroused by a plaintive crying. She glanced up. Looking at her through the bars on the outside window-ledge, was a limp, bedraggled and forlorn kitten with a torn ear. It had climbed the apple tree to be rid of its merciless pursuers.
Deliverance jumped to her feet and stretched forth her arms with a cry of joy.
“Oh, Thomas, Thomas, the Lord hath sent ye as a sign to comfort me!”
The kitten mewed sympathetically. It made its way in through the bars to the inner ledge. Then it thrust a shrinking paw downwards, but hastily drew it back. Deliverance was puzzled to know how to reach the little creature.
She held up her petticoat like a basket and coaxed the kitten to jump, but without effect. Then she made a shelf of her hands, held high as possible, while she stood on tip-toes. But the shaking hands offered no safety to the shrinking kitten.
Yet the tender, beseeching tones of his little mistress won at last upon the cowardly soul of Thomas and fired him to dare all. He made an unexpected flying leap, landing on the golden head as the securest foothold. There he slipped and scrambled valiantly, until two eager hands lifted him down and the beloved little voice, broken with sobs, cried, “Oh, Thomas, my own dear Thomas, the Lord has sent ye as a sign to comfort me!”
Thus Thomas, a starved, runaway kitten, worn to a shadow, chased by dogs, ready to die of exhaustion, came into his own again.
Deliverance learned a lesson that evening which all must learn, sooner or later, that the crust thankfully shared with another, makes even prison-fare sweeter and more satisfying than plenty served in luxury and loneliness.
The corn mush and milk, which at times she had refused with a disdainful toss of her little head, now became a delicious dish with a rare savour, such as she had never before perceived. For while she ate from one side of the bowl with a spoon, Thomas, on the opposite side, drank the milk with incessant lapping of his small pink tongue, until in his eagerness to drain it, he thrust his two front feet in the bowl.