CHAPTER XVIII

SALLY HAS HER WISH

One morning some weeks later, Elvira had the surprise of her life. She came down into the kitchen and looked around for the two cats. Oxford was stretched out on his woolen blanket under the table, but Sally was nowhere to be seen. Elvira remembered that she had left the lower drawer of the kitchen dresser open thinking that Sally might like to sleep there for a change, so she went over and looked in. For a moment she was startled and thought she must have seen wrong and that Sally had caught two mice. But although the furry objects were the smallest kittens she had ever seen and hardly larger than mice, there was no mistaking their fur coats. One was black with four very tiny white paws and a white breast, and the other was white with a tiger tail and a tiger blanket on its back.

‘Miss Harvey,’ Elvira called, ‘did you ever see anything so sweet?’

Sally’s whole expression had changed. Instead of having a sad little face, she looked proud and happy. It seemed as if she were saying: ‘See what I have got for wishing for it? I have had to wish for a very long time, but at last I have got just what I wanted, twins, a brother and a sister, just like Oxford and myself, and the darlings shall have a happier kittenhood than we had. And she said to herself,

If I cannot have a mother, a mother I will be With some darling, furry children of my own, The furriest, purriest kittens, the most harum-scarum kittens, The liveliest, gayest kittens ever known.

It seemed this time as if Miss Harvey understood everything she said, for she remarked, ‘Dear Sally has got her wish at last; see how blissfully happy she looks, Elvira!’

They decided it would be wiser not to mention the kittens to Miss Winifred for a few days, as she had a friend staying with her who was taking all of her thoughts at present. So the kittens were almost a week old before Miss Winifred knew about them.

One morning Elvira said, ‘Sally has two little kittens.’

‘Kittens!’ Miss Winifred said in astonishment. ‘I am very sorry to hear it.’

‘Sorry to hear it,’ said Elvira, ‘and you think you are fond of cats.’

‘Four seem too many to have in one house, and they will grow into cats, but we can keep them for a time and then send them to the Ellen Gifford Home, or else find good homes for them.’

‘Would you like to see them?’ Elvira asked.

Miss Winifred went into the kitchen, and Elvira put one of the tiny creatures into her hand and then the other. No one with a heart for kittens could help being touched by the sight of these furry creatures and the anxious expression of their mother’s face as she watched Miss Winifred, for she was not sure of her.

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‘Please don’t drop them,’ she pleaded in her own language. ‘Please don’t even think about homes for them later on. This is a good home, and I will be a good mother. I do so want their kittenhood to be happy and not sad like mine.’

Miss Winifred put the kittens down very gently.

‘At any rate, they can’t leave their mother for some weeks,’ she said.

It was not long before these tiny objects were scampering about the kitchen floor, getting in front of Elvira’s feet just as their mother and their uncle had done, for they found a way of getting out of the drawer of the dresser. They made a stepladder of their mother, and, climbing on her back, gave a flying leap to the floor and then chased each other about. Patty, the little tiger kitten, was more lively than her brother Eben, and she would turn a somersault as she reached him and then they would skip about in high glee, and wrestle together. There had never been such gay kittens in Miss Winifred’s house.

‘It is as good as a tonic having them around,’ said Miss Winifred, one morning as she visited the kitchen.

‘Certainly they are like a tonic to their mother,’ said Miss Harvey. ‘I never saw any one more changed.’

Oxford was not at all interested in his niece and nephew, so he spent more of his time than usual away from home. It was the gentle Peter who was all ready to be friendly, and when the two kittens went dancing up to him, he was pleased. But Sally, who feared he would do them harm, raised her powerful voice to call them to her, and then gave Peter the thrashing that Oxford had meant to give him. She seemed possessed by fury as she flew at him and put her claws in his fur.

‘Look at your perfect lady now,’ said Elvira to Miss Harvey.

‘She is a good mother. She is only afraid he will hurt her children,’ said Miss Harvey.

Sometimes in the days that followed, Sally wished that her desires had not been granted so completely. She loved having her kittens and she was glad they were having a happier kittenhood than her own, that was so sombre and sad. But why had she ever asked for ‘harum-scarum’ kittens, or the ‘liveliest, gayest kittens ever known’? Surely it would have been enough to wish for ‘Kittens’! Sally was not sure that it was ever wise to wish too hard for anything, and yet she liked to watch her children playing so fearlessly, for kind Elvira and dear Miss Harvey let them frisk about the kitchen as they pleased. One day Eben got into one of Elvira’s rubbers that were in the entry. He peered out from this pleasant spot as if to say, ‘See the nice little house I have found, it just fits me.’ Baskets and boxes they appropriated for their own, and on cold nights, after the kitchen fire was out, Sally joined them and they slept warm and comfortable in a pasteboard box just the right size for three.

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When they ran up Elvira’s back and pulled out her hairpins, or landed on the clock shelf in the kitchen in search of their catnip mice and knocked down a few trifles, Sally said, ‘Children, children, why can’t you be quiet and well-behaved, as your uncle and I were!’

‘But, mother, you once told us you knocked a candlestick off the study mantelpiece,’ Patty reminded her.

‘That is true,’ said their mother, who was a very fair cat.

‘You said you climbed up Elvira,’ said Eben; ‘that is what put the idea into our heads.’

‘I never did it but once or twice, not every day. I was a much quieter kitten.’

‘Because you were half-starved,’ said Patty. ‘Mother, just be a kitten with us. Be young with your children.’

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