“I should think you would have your cats wear black ribbons when they are attending a funeral;” and without waiting for a reply, she held up her fancy work and asked mistress how she liked it. It was a doily stamped with a group of kittens playing ring-around the rosies, and several of the figures had already been worked in beautiful colored silk.
“It must be pleasant, no doubt,” said mistress, “to work beautiful figures of happy creatures upon canvas; but I prefer to give joy and happiness to the living. And as for the emblem you speak of, to my mind flowers symbolize the transition of life far more fitly than do the time-worn weeds of mourning.”
The lady made no answer to this at all, and mistress went into the house, leaving her alone with her fancy work.
Before we were allowed to go on the porch again, it was thoroughly scrubbed with boiling water; the tub was scalded, and the old mat was burned.
On the following day a neighboring cat, whom I have since learned to know as Jack, came into our yard, and I noticed that he persistently sniffed around the little fresh mound.
“What is in there?” said he, after he had visited it for the third time.
I told him about the sad occurrence of the day before.
“Was it a gray cat with white toes?”
I told him it was.
“Poor Betsy Whitefoot,” said Jack, in tones of real anguish. “I have shared my meals with her ever since the Mortons went to their summer house in the country. A better mouser never lived than Betsy, and how they could so cruelly desert her is more than I can understand.”