The other one objected, but only faintly, and the long and the short of it was they carried him home to the house which they rented on a farm, and looked after him most kindly, washing his sore with warm water every day, and smearing it with nice clean ointment. That was not all. They took him to England and put him in a cat's home, paying eighteen-pence a week for him. From there some one bought him—the mistress of Mrs. Murch. That brings him down to the time when we first knew him; and indeed, when I think of the good stories he had to tell, I am sorry he ever left us.
CHAPTER XVI
THE BLACK CAT BRINGS MEASLES
A week after that Auntie May did not come down to breakfast, and Mary looked fussy and important as if something had happened, and a certain great carriage came and stood at our door, which mother said was a doctor's carriage. We heard Mary and the cook talking about it.
'It's measles, sure enough,' said Mary. 'Mrs. Curtis's little boy, t'other side of the square, died of it last week. It is all over. You and me'll go next, cook, sure as eggs is eggs.'
'Eggs is often egg powder,' said the cook severely. 'You just sit still and don't go to meet misfortune half-way. More work and less talk, I say.'
We told the black cat that he was little better than a murderer, bringing measles in and giving them to our dear Auntie May, and we made him so uncomfortable that he left. I don't suppose he would starve or anything, for he had collected enough strength with us to last him through the winter, and make him fit to catch as many birds as he could eat. Besides, I don't think he was going to live long anyhow. To my certain knowledge he had licked up a whole tube of madder-lake, and swallowed the cork of a bottle of quick-drying copal.
Mary was not a good cat-maid, though she had acquired what Auntie May called the cat-tread. She had learned to walk carefully, shovelling her feet along the floor so as to avoid treading on kittens. Of course, now that we were older, we oozed away ourselves, and were too proud to call out if a paw got caught, or so on.
Then an awful thing happened, and while Auntie May was ill too. Perhaps if Auntie May hadn't been ill it would never have happened. Zobeide went and lost herself.