Many an idle evening in the cottage by the cross-road did the still pretty spinster sit in cosy companionship with the kitten, thinking over her life’s secret. Should she have married Thorkild Skov after all—he was now a well-to-do butcher? Or Frederik Hansen—he was now owner of Hill Farm? Or ... ah, she had had so many wooers once upon a time!
No, no, she thought, jumping up restlessly—far better off as she was! All that terrible fuss over the arrival of each little citizen into the world, with which she had been in such close contact since her early girlhood, had quite frightened her.
She sat down again and fell into deep thought, her hand gently stroking “Terror’s” soft fur, as he lay purring on the sofa at her side....
And yet—she sighed deeply—and yet, she wished in spite of all that she had not been so afraid of life!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
GREY PUSS’ FUTURE
The late autumn showers were beginning.... Heavy, violet-blue clouds swollen with moisture drifted about—and often two rainbows stood simultaneously one behind the other in the sky.
Grey Puss could no longer forage in the fields—it was wet and muddy everywhere.
The wretched wild bees, whose earth-hive she had dug up, hastened to cover their remnants of honey with layers of moss....
The chirp of grasshoppers and the buzzing of mosquitoes no longer filled the night air; unquiet and discomfort reigned in their stead. The cows mooed for shelter and the young cattle coughed and sneezed with cold—whilst the bulls in the meadows boomed deeply and mournfully.