Something was in the corner, she felt it with her benumbed hands. It was soft and warm to her touch. A plaintive mew followed. The something was a cat. At first she rather resented its presence. Then she gathered it up in her arms and pressed it against the bosom of her ragged old dress. Here was a creature as miserable as she. It was only a cat, but she felt less lonely with it in her arms. When she had been a little girl she had had a pet kitten.
Each was cold—the cat and the woman—but each found some warmth in the other. The cat stopped mewing and the woman stopped moaning. The wind had shifted and the rain had ceased. The door swung open again and the moon hanging calmly beautiful among the clouds, shone through the tangle of masts and cordage and into the hallway.
The woman, crouched in the corner, held the cat as she would have held a child. By-and-by she began to rock slowly to and fro. The clouds drifted away, and the stars joined the moon in peeping through the door.
The woman’s eyes were closed and she was crooning an old-fashioned lullaby. The cat was very faintly purring and one of its paws rested on her bare neck. The moon sank slowly out of sight and new clouds obscured the stars.
When the policeman peered in the hallway just before daybreak, the woman and the cat were asleep.
And they are still sleeping.
TIMMY MULLIGAN’S RALLY
(James E. Kinsella: Chicago News.)
Little Timmy Mulligan was very sick. Some of his chums said in an awed whisper: “He is dyin’ dis time, sure pop.”