A FELINE FUROR
Returning to town, the automobile party passed Stout's tobacco barn
again and when it came in sight Dot eagerly began to explain to the
older girls how and where she had found a name for the sailor-baby that
Luke Shepard had given her.
"That is a real pretty name I think," said Ruth, absently. "And quite
new I am sure."
Agnes demanded again where the smallest Corner House girl had seen the
name, 'Nosmo' painted. "Why!" she exclaimed, "it says 'king'--that's
what is painted on that door, children."
"Oh, but, Sister!" exclaimed Tess. "_That_ is the other half of the big
door. They've shut the half that was open when we rode along before and
opened the other one." But Agnes was not listening to this explanation.
She had turned back to Ruth and Cecile.
Dot was eagerly repeating something over and over to herself. Tess
turned to demand what it was.
"Oh, Tessie!" the smallest Corner House girl cried, "that sounds
b-e-a-u-ti-ful!"
"What does?" demanded her sister.
"I've just the nicest middle name for this sailor-baby," and she hugged
her new possession again.
"What is it?" asked the interested Tess.
"Nosmo King Kenway. Isn't that nice?" eagerly cried the little girl.
"It's--it's so 'ristocratic. Don't you think so, Tess?"
Tess repeated the full name, too. It did sound rather nice. The oftener
you said it the better it sounded. And--yet--there was something a wee
bit peculiar about it. But Tess was too kind-hearted to suggest anything
wrong with the name, as long as Dot liked it so much. And she had found
it all her very own self!
"I wonder what Sammy will say to _that_," murmured Dot placidly. "I
guess he'll think it is a nice name, won't he?"
"Well, if he doesn't it won't make any difference," Tess said loftily.
Just at that time, however, (though quite unsuspected by the Corner
House girls) Sammy Pinkney had his mind quite filled with other and more
important matters.
Since his long illness in the spring Sammy had remained something of a
stranger to his oldtime boy friends. Of course, as soon as he got into
school again and associated with the boys of his own class once more, he
would get back into the "gang" as he called it. He was not a boy to be
gibed because he played with girls so much.
However, habit brought him to the side gate of the Corner House on this
afternoon, whether the little girls were at home or not. He was so often
in and out of the house that neither Mrs. MacCall nor Linda paid much
attention to him; for although Sammy Pinkney was as "full of mischief as
a chestnut is of meat" (to quote Mrs. MacCall) he never touched anything
about the house that was not his, nor wandered into the rooms upstairs,
save the one from the window of which the aerial tramway was strung to
the window of his own bedroom "scatecornered" across Willow Street.
His aim was the window of the little girls' big playing and sleeping
room now, for the wire basket chanced to be fastened at this end of the
line. He had it in his mind to pull the basket over to his own house,
fill it there with some sort of cargo, and draw it back and forth,
amusing himself by imagining that he was loading a ship from the dock.
"Or, maybe," Sammy ruminated, "I'll have the old ship wrecked, and the
lifesavers will put out the life buoy; and we'll bring the passengers
ashore. Crickey! that'll be just the thing. I'll save 'em all from
drownin'--that's what I'll do!"
Then he looked about in some anxiety for the wrecked passengers of the
foundered steamship which he immediately imagined was cast on the reef
just about as far from the Corner House as his own domicile stood.
"Got to have passengers!" cried Sammy. "Oh, crickey! the dolls would be
just the thing. But I promised I wouldn't touch them. Aw, pshaw! a
feller can't have much fun after all where there's a lot of girls
around."
Not that the girls were here to bother Sammy Pinkney now; but he felt
the oppressive effect of Dot's mandatory decree.
"If a fellow had _forty_ dolls he wouldn't be afraid to give them a ride
on this aerial tramway!"
Wandering downstairs again and out upon the side porch he found
Sandyface lying in the sun, but within sight and hearing of the four new
blind babies which were nested upon Uncle Rufus' old coat just within
the shed door.
"Je-ru-sa-_lem_!" gasped Sammy, his eyes big with a sudden idea.
He knelt down beside the little soft balls of fur, and Sandyface came to
rub around him and worship likewise. But she had no idea of the thought
that ran riot in Sammy's head.
"Say! they'd never know they was disturbed," muttered the boy.
He gathered up the old coat, with the four little mites in it, and
started stealthily for the back stairs. Sandyface, not at all disturbed
in her mind, followed, purring, but with no intention of quite losing
sight of her babies. The little girls were in the habit of carrying her
progeny all about the place and always brought them back in safety.
Sammy stole up the stairs on tiptoe. He knew very well he was up to
mischief and he did not wish to meet Mrs. MacCall, or even Linda. For
the Finnish girl who helped the housekeeper had her private opinion of
Sammy Pinkney--and often expressed it publicly.
"If I haf a boy brudder like him, I sew him up in a bag--oh, yes!" was
one of the mildest threats that Linda ever made regarding Sammy.
Sammy pushed up the screen and placed the coat, with the four kittens
asleep on it, carefully in the deep wire basket. Sandyface, interested,
leaped upon the window sill, and smelled of the kittens and the basket.
Then she craned her neck to look down to the ground.
"You'd better not jump, cat," warned Sammy, unfastening the rope that
ran through blocks at both ends and so enabled one to pull the basket
back and forth. "It's a long way to the ground."
Sandyface had no such silly idea in her wise old head. As Sammy turned
away for a moment she stepped gingerly into the basket, moved the
squirming kittens over, and settled down to nurse them. A little thing
like being twenty feet or so up in the air with her babies did not
disturb Sandyface--much.
"Hey, you!" exclaimed Sammy, grabbing the old cat away before the
snuffling little kittens had really found she was with them. "Can't
take the whole crew and all the passengers off the wreck at once. You'll
overload the lifecar. Scat!" and he put her down upon the floor.
But the kittens began to whine now; they were being cheated, they
thought, and they desired their mother very much. Sandyface replied to
them and jumped upon the window sill again.
"Hey!" Sammy said, "didn't I tell you to wait till the next load? Aw!
look at that cat!"
For the mother cat had stepped into the basket again, purring, and once
more settled down.
"All right, then," ejaculated Sammy in disgust, "if you're bound to go
along! But don't blame _me_ if you're so heavy that the old carrier
busts."
He carefully drew the basket out upon the wire, away from the house.
Sandyface lifted her head; but as she was very comfortable and had her
family with her, she made no great objection as the basket swung out
into space.
"Je-ru-sa-_lem_!" gasped Sammy, with fearful joy. "Bet that old basket
would hold all the other cats too. Wish I had the bunch of 'em--Spotty,
and Almira, and Popocatepetl, and Bungle, and Starboard, Port,
Hard-a-Lee and Main-sheet! And Almira's got four kittens of her own
somewhere. And so's Popocatepetl. Whew! that makes--makes--"
But Sammy did not like arithmetic enough to figure up this sum; and he
did not seem to have fingers enough just then to count them. So he gave
it up. A cat and four kittens swinging out over Willow Street, with all
the winds of heaven blowing about them, should have satisfied even Sammy
Pinkney.
The boy pulled the basket cautiously to the extreme end of the
wire--until the carrier bumped against the clapboards under his own
bedroom window. He saw Sandyface raise her head again and glare around.
Half asleep until this time she had not realized that she and her babies
were being so marvelously transported from their own home to the cottage
where Sammy resided.
"Crickey!" exclaimed the boy suddenly. "If mother comes out and sees
'em--or if that there bulldog Buster hears those cats meowing, there'll
be trouble over there."
He started anxiously to draw the cats and the carrier back to the Corner
House. In some way the line by which he drew the basket became fouled at
the other end; or the pulleys on the wire became chocked. Sammy could
not tell just what the trouble was, anyway.
But to his dismay the basket stuck midway of the line. High over the
middle of Willow Street it stopped, and Sandyface was now standing up
and telling the neighborhood just how scared she felt for her babies and
herself.
"Lie down, cat!" the perturbed Sammy cried to her. "You'll fall
overboard and drown--I mean, break your silly neck! S-st! Lie down!"
Tom Jonah, the old house dog, appeared suddenly below and began to bark.
Billy Bumps came galloping around the house, shook his horns in
disapproval, and "bla-ated" loudly.
Linda came to the kitchen door, beheld the cat in the basket high on the
wire, and seemed to understand the cause of the trouble with uncanny
certainty.
"That iss the Pinkney boy!" she cried. "If he was _my_ brudder--"
Mrs. MacCall, called by the clatter, ran out. Aunt Sarah Maltby, even,
appeared at the door, while Uncle Rufus limped up from the hen houses
mildly demanding:
"What's done happen' to dem cats? Don't I hear dem prognosticatin'
about, somewhar's?"
"Sammy Pinkney!" cried Mrs. MacCall, the first to spy the boy at the
window of the little girls' play-room, "what are you doing up there?"
"He's got the cat and the kittens in that basket. Did you ever?"
exclaimed Aunt Sarah.
"You naughty boy!" commanded Mrs. MacCall, "you pull that thing right
back here and let poor Sandyface out."
"I can't, Mrs. MacCall," woefully declared the boy who wanted to be a
pirate.
"Then pull it over to your house," said the housekeeper.
"I--I can't do that either," confessed Sammy.
"Why not, I should admire to know?" demanded Aunt Sarah.
"'Cause it's stuck," gloomily explained Sammy. "I can't pull it one way,
nor yet the other. Oh, dear! I wish that cat would stop yowling!"
What he feared happened at that moment. His mother, hearing the
commotion in the street and seeing a crowd beginning to gather, ran out
of the house. She was always expecting something to happen to Sammy; and
if a crowd gathered anywhere near the house she surmised the most
dreadful peril for her son.
"Sammy! Sammy!" she shrieked. "What has become of Sammy?"
"Here I am, Ma," replied Sammy, with disgust.
"What's the matter with you? Come home this minute!" commanded Mrs.
Pinkney, who was a rather near-sighted woman, and having run out without
her glasses she did not spy her son in the window of the Corner House.
"I--I can't," confessed the boy, rather shaken.
At that moment Mrs. Pinkney saw the neighbors pointing upward, and
hearing them say: "See up there? In the basket! The poor thing!" she
naturally thought they referred to the peril of her young son.
"Oh, Sammy Pinkney! But you just wait till your father gets home
to-night!" she cried, trying to peer up at the wire. "I knew you'd get
into mischief with that thing Neale O'Neil strung up there. Whatever has
the boy tried to do? Walk tight-rope?"
"It's in the basket," somebody tried to explain to her.
That was too much for the excitable Mrs. Pinkney.
"He'll fall out of it! Of course he will. And break his precious neck!
Oh, get a blanket! Some of you run for the fire ladders! How will we get
him down?"
She sat down on the grass, threw her apron over her head, and refused to
look upward at the wire carrier in which Sandyface and her kittens were
suspended, and out of which she expected her reckless son to fall at any
moment.
It was at this exciting moment, and into the hubbub made by the
neighbors and Sandyface, that the automobile party whizzed around the
corner. Neale brought the car to a sudden stop and everybody screamed.
"That Sammy Pinkney!" gasped Tess, in despair. "I just _knew_ he'd get
into something!"