“I know. But he has to pay money for doctors, and money for medicine, and money for your red sweater, and money for milk for Pussy-Purr-up, and money for our beefsteak pie.”
“The Boy-Next-Door says we’re poor, Mother.”
“We are rich, my darling. We have love, and each other, and Pussy-Purr-up——”
“His mother won’t let him have a cat,” said the Small Girl, with her mind still on the Boy-Next-Door. “But he’s going to have a radio.”
“Would you rather have a radio than Pussy-Purr-up?”
The Small Girl gave a crow of derision. “I’d rather have Pussy-Purr-up than anything else in the whole wide world.”
At that, the great cat, who had been sitting on the hearth with his paws tucked under him and his eyes like moons, stretched out his satin-shining length, and jumped up on the arm of the chair beside the Small Girl and her mother, and began to sing a song that was like a mill-wheel away off. He purred so long and so loud that at last the Small Girl grew drowsy.
“Tell me some more about the chocolate mouse,” she said, and nodded, and slept.
The Small Girl’s mother carried her into another room, put her to bed, and came back to the kitchen—and it was full of shadows.
But she did not let herself sit among them. She wrapped herself in a great cape and went out into the cold dusk, with a sweep of wind; heavy clouds overhead: and a band of dull orange showing back of the trees, where the sun had burned down.