His sister, who was finding it difficult to whip up a loving sorrow for Bunker, while Bunker, mangy and alive, stared at her through the window, said nothing and William muttered: “All right—after tea—I’ll go after tea.”
He went after tea. He handed the basket to Mr. Gorton with an unblushing: “There was two really to be done—here’s the other.”
He stood oppressed by the thought of his crime, and waited the return of his basket. He had even lost interest in Mr. Gorton’s wonderland. When the parrot screamed, “Go away, you ass, go away,” he replied huffily, “Go away yourself.”
As he lay in bed that night, he wondered vaguely whose cat he had consigned to an untimely death.
He soon knew.
“Luky, Luky, Luky, Luky, Luk-ee-ee-ee. Where are you, darling? Luky?—Luky? Luky, Luky, Luky, Luky, Lukee-ee-ee-ee? What’s happened to you, Luky? Where are you, darling? Luky, Luky, Luky, Luky, Luk-ee-ee-ee-ee.”
It seemed to William to go on all night.
*****
William’s excursions in the character of robber chief, outlaw, or Red Indian, took him many miles outside the radius of his own village. Three days after the day of his ill-omened mistake he was passing a wayside cottage (in the character of a famous detective on the track of crime), when he noticed a large black cat sitting upon the doorstep washing its face. There was something familiar about that cat. William stopped. It wasn’t Bunker, but was it——
“Luky,” said William in a hoarse persuasive whisper.