These were the only verses Ethel ever made. Perhaps we are beginning near the end of the story. You may want to know what the big pink begonia was, and how the cat killed it.
The beginning of this sad story was a red ribbon bow with a kitten behind it: the bow was so big and the cat was so little, that the ribbon looked much more important than the kitten that wore it. Ethel called the kitten Kafoozalum: Tom talked of the bow with the cat behind it; to which Ethel retorted: "The ribbon becomes her very much, Tom. Boys have no taste."
Early in the summer—about the time that the kitten was a weak little squeaker in a basket of straw with the cat of the house next door—Ethel was given a plant as a present. There had never before been a begonia in her mother's greenhouse; and Ethel knew very little about it, except that any rough treatment would kill it. The begonia grew very fast. It became a tall plant, with beautiful large reddish-veined leaves, and it was covered with a cloud of pink blossoms.
One day Ethel ran out of the conservatory in a hurry and left the door open; and Kafoozalum—the red bow with the kitten behind it—ran into the conservatory in a hurry, as she had never had the chance before. Tom, coming home from school, went, watering-pot in hand, to attend to his geranium-slips; he found the door open, and the kitten nearly on its head in frantic attempts to roll in the begonia pot.
A few weeks after, all the pink bloom was gone. The begonia, branch and leaf, died away. There was nothing left but a dry brown stump.
"It is dead!" cried Ethel. "A knock or a rub kills the young shoots. Mrs. Smith told me so. Kafoozalum rubbed and knocked it enough to kill it all."
"Tears! tears for the begonia!" laughed Tom. "Why, Ethel, I thought nothing but the death of Kafoozalum would reduce you to tears."
"Ah! Tom, but you don't know how fond I was of that plant. It was the only one I ever had. I feel almost as if it was really alive once, and dead now! I shall make it a grave and bury it."
Tom seemed very much amused at this idea—because the begonia was buried already in its own pot—and Ethel could not bear his making fun about it. So she ran away to her mother's room, with tears in her eyes.
"Mother, how do you spell 'begonia'?"