BUTTON FRIGHTENS TWO NURSES
While Billy had been relating his adventures Button had been lying in a
box under Stubby’s window, trying to think of a way to get to him and
tell him that Billy was here in this very place.
“If there was only a fire escape!” he sighed. “Then I could easily make
it.”
It was getting near supper time but he was still puzzling his brain
over the matter when he saw one of the nurses in Stubby’s room come to
the window and let down a rope with a basket on it. When it reached the
ground she still stood there holding on to the rope as if waiting for
some one to come.
“What in the world can be going on now, I wonder,” mused Button.
Presently from around the corner of the hospital from the kitchen he
saw another nurse appear with a tray loaded down with the dogs’ supper.
There not being an elevator in this old building, the nurses had
thought out this way of saving them climbing the long flight of steps
with the heavy trays on which they carried the dogs’ food to them. One
nurse would go to the kitchen, get the food prepared by the cook,
and then bring it around to this window, place it in the basket, and
the nurse in the window would pull it up. When the dogs had finished
their meal, the dishes were lowered in the basket just as they had been
hauled up, carried back to the kitchen and washed. So you see what a
saving of steps this basket elevator really was.
“My, if I could only manage to get in that basket and have her pull me
up!” thought Button.
The cat watched the nurses raise and lower the basket until presently a
nurse came from the kitchen, put the food in the basket and went off,
forgetting to pull a string which rang a bell, the signal that the
basket was ready to be pulled up.
“Gee, she has forgotten to pull the string and gone off. I can see the
nurse in the window waiting for the signal. She will get tired waiting
pretty soon and pull it up, I believe. I am going over and eat up what
is in that basket and hop in myself, and then I shall be pulled up. If
the basket feels heavy, the nurse will think there must be an extra
amount of dishes in this trip.”
Suiting the action to the thought, Button hurried over to it, lapped
up a cup of milk, ate some cold chicken and potatoes, and then he saw
the basket begin to move. Without a moment’s hesitation he jumped in
and sat on the soiled dishes and the remaining suppers. Up, up he was
slowly drawn, and he heard the nurse mumble to herself, “Wonder what
they have in this basket to-night? It feels like a basket of bricks, it
is so heavy.”
[Illustration]
“Now if she only doesn’t see me until the basket is safely on the
window ledge I shall be lucky. I am afraid if she sees me, it will
frighten her and she will let go the basket and down I will fall with a
dull thud.”
But just as the basket reached the ledge of the window her attention
was called to something inside and she turned her head to look, at the
same time reaching her hand out and pulling the basket on to the window
sill from force of habit. When she turned back to the window, there
on the sill sat a black cat with big, yellow eyes looking at her. It
startled her so she screamed and pulled the basket in off the sill,
and then let go the handle, and it rolled under the bed of one of the
patients, spilling out bottles of milk, biscuits, sliced chicken, and
many other good things.
Taking advantage of the confusion, Button jumped down from the window
and ran under the beds until he came to the one occupied by Stubby.
Then he moved softly so as not to frighten Stubby, and crawled in bed
under the sheets so no one could see him. No one did see him do it for
every dog in the ward was sitting up in bed, straining their eyes to
see what had happened by the window.
“The cat! The cat! Where did it go?” the nurse kept calling in an
excited voice. For when she turned to look for him, the cat she had
seen was gone. After all the nurses had looked under every bed and in
all the corners and in every other conceivable place, they began to
tease her and tell her it was an illusion, that she had only imagined
she saw a cat. After awhile she began to think that perhaps this was
the case. Still what would make her think she saw a cat when she did
not? Especially as she had not even been thinking of cats? The only
thing that looked as if she had seen one was that half the dogs’
suppers had been eaten or at least they were short some food. That
nurse went to bed that night with a headache from trying to decide
whether or not she had seen a cat.
Soon after supper the dogs in the hospital were given their last dose
of medicine, their bandages were straightened, and then they were ready
to be tucked in for the night. The nurses patted the dogs on their
heads and said good-night to them just as if they were people. Then
they turned down the lights and went out, leaving only the night nurse
in charge in one corner of the room where she sat by a shaded light
knitting for the soldiers and dreaming and praying for the safe return
of her brothers and sweetheart after the war was over. Button did not
stir until Stubby stuck his head under the sheet and whispered to him
that he could talk now, as the nurse was so occupied in picking up some
stitches in her knitting that she had dropped that she would not hear
them.
So there the two lay all curled up under the sheet, Button telling
of the finding of Billy and Stubby listening with all his ears. When
Button had finished, Stubby gave a great sigh and said, “Isn’t it
wonderful to think that we should have found him in this big, big
country across the sea? My, I am so glad it will make me well soon. For
life was not half worth living without our dear chum Billy. I know you
agree with me, Button.”
“I surely do!” exclaimed Button. “How is your leg, old fellow? Healing
fast, I hope.”
“Oh, yes. The nurse said they would take the splints off to-morrow, and
she doesn’t think I am going to be lame, it was healed so straight and
fine. Isn’t that grand? For I would hate to be bothered limping along
on a lame leg on our trips. It would be very inconvenient when I wished
to run away when some one was chasing us, too. I hate to hurry you off,
Button, but the night nurse will be coming around soon to straighten
our beds and give us our last drink for the night so I am afraid she
might lift up the sheet and find you. But how are you going to get out
of the door into the hall, as it is shut?”
“Trust me! I will get out as I came--by the window.”
“I did not know there was a fire escape by the window,” said Stubby.
“There isn’t. I came up on the food basket.” And then Button told him
how he had come up in the basket and nearly scared a nurse to death.
“But you can’t go down that way because there is no one here to let the
basket down,” objected Stubby.
“I don’t need any basket to go down in. All I need is the rope, and as
it is fastened to the wall I will just have to slide down it.”
“Oh, Button, but you are a smart cat! You should have been born a man,
not a cat. If you had, the world would have heard of wonderful things
you had done, I am sure.”
“If you wish I had been born a man, I wish the three of us had.
Wouldn’t Billy have made a splendid brigadier general, while you would
have made a dandy lieutenant!”
“S-s-s-s-sh-h-h! I hear the nurse coming. Scoot! Drop out of bed on the
side nearest the wall and run under the beds until you are near the
window,” advised Stubby.
The nurse was walking down the aisle of the ward that faced the window
when the moon came out from under a cloud and shone straight into the
room. And she saw not only the moon, but a big black cat as it jumped
up on the window sill. She shut her eyes, looked again and again, and
the cat had disappeared!
[Illustration]
“It must be the same cat that Nurse Mollie saw, and now it has
disappeared again as completely as it did when she saw it. She got
one glimpse and it was gone. I got another, and it faded in thin air.
Heavens! We must be going to be bombarded for black cats bring bad
luck, they say, and this cat has come to warn us. I’ll just run to the
window and see if I can’t see it. It could not jump out of the window
because it is too high from the ground, and it isn’t in this room, and
cats can’t fly, so where is it?”
The nurse went to the window and looked out. No tree, roof or shed was
near enough for the cat to have jumped to them and then to the ground,
so of course it must have been a spook cat for no cat was in sight. She
never looked close to the building, or she would have seen a rope to
which clung a black cat, hanging on desperately as it lowered itself to
the ground.