Mother Bunch and Aunt Tabby were sitting on the kitchen steps, feeling
very sad.
It was a long time since little Jazbury had run away and left them, but
they could not get used to being without him. Bitterly did they miss
his fun and his liveliness and all his pretty ways.
"The quickest, strongest, handsomest kitten I ever had," said Mother
Bunch.
"If I only hadn't boxed his ears that time," mourned Aunt Tabby, "maybe
he wouldn't have run away."
"You mustn't let yourself think that," mewed Mother Bunch. "I guess we
were both of us a little hard on him."
Suddenly there was a sound of scratching and scrabbling on the fence
between the yard and the lot.
"Oh, if that were only little Jazbury," mewed Aunt Tabby sadly.
"Don't say that; you know it couldn't be," said Mother Bunch.
A moment later both cats sprang to their feet with a loud mew.
Above the top of the fence appeared a little black and white face, two
white paws, a black body, a black tail waving like a flag. It was
Jazbury.
He jumped down into the yard, and rushed up to his mother and Aunt
Tabby. Fluffy followed him.
"Momma! momma!" he mewed. "Oh, Aunt Tabby! I'll never run away again.
Oh, I'm so glad to be home!"
He and his mother and Aunt Tabby rubbed noses, and the cats kissed
Jazbury, cat fashion, and mewed aloud with joy.
"And little Fluffy, too!" cried Mother Bunch. "Oh, how glad your mother
will be to have you home again. She's so unhappy about you."
None of them noticed, at first, that Yowler had followed the other two
kittens into the yard, and was now sitting over near the fence grinning
at them.
"It was very, very naughty of you to run away, Jazbury," said his aunt.
"We've been worried to death about you."
"I know," mewed Jazbury, "and I'm so sorry. But I'll never do it again,
Aunt Tabby. Indeed I won't."
"I suppose you ought to be punished," sighed his mother, "but I'm so
glad to have you back again I haven't the heart to do it."
At that moment Aunt Tabby espied Yowler sitting there grinning at them.
"Did you go away with that Yowler cat?" she cried. "Did you, Jazbury?
Tell me at once."
"Well, yes, I did."
"I knew it! It's all his fault. S-s-st! Gr-r-r-r! Get out of here, you
bad cat!" And Aunt Tabby flew at Yowler so fiercely that he gave a wild
miaw, and flew over the fence and disappeared from sight.
"And don't you ever dare to come back again," Aunt Tabby growled after
him.
And Yowler never did. Maybe he went back to the baker's, and maybe he
left the neighborhood in search of a better home, but at any rate
Jazbury never saw him again.
And now Jazbury and the two cats settled down on the kitchen steps
together, and Jazbury told his mother and Aunt Tabby all his adventures
ever since that early morning when he had stolen away from home.
Little Fluffy had already climbed over into his own yard in search of
his mother, so there were only the three of them.
The two older cats listened eagerly to Jazbury's tale. "And I'll tell
you one thing, Aunt Tabby," mewed Jazbury as he ended his story, "I
learned to keep myself clean while I was at Miss Sarah's. You needn't
ever bother over that again."
"Well, that's a good thing," replied his aunt. "Almost worth running
away for, I should say."
"I don't know about that," sighed his mother. "I don't know whether
even that was worth all the unhappiness he gave us."
And Jazbury felt very sad at the thought of all the trouble he had
caused.
That night the kitten slept in his own cellar again, with his dear
mother and Aunt Tabby, one on either side of him. How safe and warm and
happy and sheltered he felt.
When his mother and Aunt Tabby awoke the next morning, however, Jazbury
was no longer there.
"What _has_ become of him?" mewed Aunt Tabby. "He surely can't have run
away again."
"Oh, no! Never think such a thing," cried his mother. "He has just gone
on upstairs. Let's go and find him."
The two cats hurried up the cellar steps together. They found the door
at the top already open. As they entered the kitchen they saw Jazbury
dragging something in from the shed beyond. Something that was too
heavy for him to lift.
[Illustration: _They saw Jazbury dragging something in from the shed
beyond_]
"Jazbury, what _have_ you got there?" cried his mother.
Jazbury dropped the thing and ran over to her. "It's the rat," he said.
"The rat!" cried Aunt Tabby. "Not the rat that lived in the shed, and
that I've been trying to catch for such a long time!"
"Yes, that's the one," mewed Jazbury.
The cats could hardly believe him. They ran over and examined the rat
all over, sniffing at it.
"But how ever did you manage to do it?" cried Aunt Tabby. "Why, the
creature's almost as big as you are."
"Well, you see, I _had_ to learn to catch big things in the wood,"
mewed Jazbury. "The rat didn't know that; he thought he could frighten
me the way he had done before. So when I went out to the shed
early--before you were awake--he came out to catch me; but I caught
him, instead."
Then how his mother and Aunt Tabby praised and petted him! Not another
kitten in the neighbourhood, not even Fluffy himself, could have done
such a thing as that.
But Jazbury was not spoiled by their praises. "Any cat could have done
it," he said, "if they could only have caught it. It was only because
he thought he could frighten me that I had a chance to get him."
But from that time on Jazbury became famous as a mouser, and he kept
himself so clean that when he grew up he was one of the handsomest cats
in all the neighbourhood around.