Mistress petted the little thing, and praised the little girl for being so kind and thoughtful in trying to find its home. She asked the little girl to take it to her own home and keep it, but she said her mother would not permit her to have a kitty because they lived in a flat, or she would be only too glad to keep it. So then, rather than have the little thing turned out without a home, mistress allowed it to remain, and she named it “Beauty” after the last one.
On the following morning one of our neighbors, having seen two strange kittens in the yard within so short a time, said to mistress: “What are you keeping over there, a cat refuge, or a hospital?”
“Why both,” said mistress. “I wouldn’t turn a stray cat away, much less a sick one.”
The lady said no more.
The little stranger seemed so thankful for a nice warm basket (I shared mine with her) she hardly left it the entire day, except to go to her meals. She would lap a whole saucer full of milk, and ask for more, and mistress fed her till she had all she wanted. I tried to find out where she had lived, but she seemed to feel so grieved at the way she had been treated, that it was fully three days before she finally consented to talk about it. Then she told me that the folks all left the house and all the things were loaded on a wagon and taken away. Said she, “I waited day after day on the doorsteps hoping they would come back. All I had to eat was what I could find in the ash pile, and nights I crawled into an old stovepipe.”
This was so much worse than anything I had ever experienced, or even heard of, I hadn’t a word to say in reply.
But evidently the cold and hunger that she had suffered had had their effect on little Beauty. Although she had the best of care, still a few days later she was taken so very ill one night that it caused her to groan most pitifully; and in the morning when Guy came down, her lifeless form lay on the floor, cold and stiff.
Mistress very tenderly wrapped the little dead body in some soft white tissue paper, and put it in a box, and Guy buried it in the rear of the yard, marking the spot with a stake on which he printed:
“Sacred to the Memory of Beauty.”
Then mistress planted some mignonette and pansies on the spot, and Guy fenced it in with pieces of arched wire, so that it made a nice little flower-bed.