"It's a cat," said Harlan. "You don't suppose the poor thing is shut up
anywhere, do you?"
"If it had been, we'd have found it. We've opened every door in the house,
I'm sure. It must be outside."
"Me-ow! Me-ow! Me-ow!" The voice was not pleading; it was rather a
command, a challenge.
"Kitty, kitty, kitty," she called. "Where are you, kitty?"
Harlan opened the outside door, and in rushed a huge black cat, with the
air of one returning home after a long absence.
"Poor kitty," said Dorothy, kindly, stooping to stroke the sable visitor,
who instinctively dodged the caress, and then scratched her hand.
"The ugly brute!" she exclaimed. "Don't touch him, Harlan."
Throughout the meal the cat sat at a respectful distance, with his
greenish yellow eyes fixed unwaveringly upon them. He was entirely black,
save for a white patch under his chin, which, in the half-light, carried
with it an uncanny suggestion of a shirt front. Dorothy at length became
restless under the calm scrutiny.
"I don't like him," she said. "Put him out."
"Thought you liked cats," remarked Harlan, reaching for another sandwich.
"I do, but I don't like this one. Please put him out."
"What, in all this storm? He'll get wet."
"He wasn't wet when he came in," objected Dorothy. "He must have some
warm, dry place of his own outside."
"Come, kitty," said Harlan, pleasantly.
"Kitty" merely blinked, and Harlan rose.
"Come, kitty."
With the characteristic independence of cats, the visitor yawned. The
conversation evidently bored him.
"Come, kitty," said Harlan, more firmly, with a low swoop of his arm. The
cat arched his back, erected an enlarged tail, and hissed threateningly.
In a dignified but effective manner, he eluded all attempts to capture
him, even avoiding Dorothy and her broom.
"There's something more or less imperial about him," she remarked, wiping
her flushed cheeks, when they had finally decided not to put the cat out.
"As long as he's adopted us, we'll have to keep him. What shall we name
him?"
"Claudius Tiberius," answered Harlan. "It suits him down to the ground."
"His first name is certainly appropriate," laughed Dorothy, with a rueful
glance at her scratched hand. Making the best of a bad bargain, she spread
an old grey shawl, nicely folded, on the floor by the stove, and requested
Claudius Tiberius to recline upon it, but he persistently ignored the
invitation.
"This is jolly enough," said Harlan. "A cosy little supper in our own
house, with a gale blowing outside, the tea kettle singing over the fire,
and a cat purring on the hearth."
"Have you heard Claudius purr?" asked Dorothy, idly.
"Come to think of it, I haven't. Perhaps something is wrong with his
purrer. We'll fix him to-morrow."
From a remote part of the house came twelve faint, silvery tones. The
kitchen clock struck next, with short, quick strokes, followed immediately
by a casual record of the hour from the clock on the mantel beneath Uncle
Ebeneezer's portrait. Then the grandfather's clock in the hall boomed out
twelve, solemn funereal chimes. Afterward, the silence seemed acute.
"The end of the honeymoon," said Dorothy, a little sadly, with a quick,
inquiring look at her husband.
"The end of the honeymoon!" repeated Harlan, gathering her into his arms.
"To-morrow, life begins!"
Several hours later, Dorothy awoke from a dreamless sleep to wonder
whether life was any different from a honeymoon, and if so, how and why.