Blackie stayed under the stoop all that day. Late in the afternoon she looked out, wondering where she could go to get something to eat or drink. And, as she poked out her head a milkman, driving his horse and wagon down the street, saw Blackie.
“Hello!” he exclaimed, stopping his horse. “The family that lives in that house is away, and the cat must be hungry. I have a little milk left in one of my cans. I’ll give her some.”
The kind milkman got out of his wagon, and with some milk in the top of one of his big cans, brought it over to Blackie. The black cat was not afraid of him, for he spoke so kindly to her.
“Here, pussy!” said the man. “Here is some milk for you. What shall I put it in? Ah, here is an empty sardine tin, that will hold it nicely.” He poured the milk in the tin. Oh! how good that milk did taste to hungry and thirsty Blackie! She just purred, she was so thankful to that man.
He watched her drink the milk, and patted her on the back, even rubbing her under the ears a little, and Blackie liked that.
“If you’re here to-morrow I’ll give you more milk,” said the man. Blackie wished he could speak her kind of talk, so she might ask him where Mabel, Arthur and the rest of the family had gone, but she could not do that.
“Well, I feel a little better,” said Blackie to herself, as she licked the milk off her whiskers with her red tongue. “I can sleep to-night I hope.”
Blackie curled up under the stoop and got ready to go to sleep. It was not yet night but soon would be. Now and then Blackie heard the dog in the next yard barking, and once another dog came snooping around the stoop where the black cat was hiding. But Blackie arched up her back, made her tail big, and hissed like a snake.
“Wuff!” barked the dog, as he ran away. “Wuff! Wow!”
“Well, I learned how to scare dogs even if I can’t jump fences as well as Speckle can,” thought Blackie. “Now I won’t be so afraid of the dog next door. Maybe I can scare him, and, if I can, life will be easier for me and Speckle, so I will have learned something by having run away and been a lost cat.”