THE TRIO CLUB
Winter came early that year, and there was a heavy snowstorm on the day
when Grandmother Lois and Mittens left town. In spite of this, however,
several people, besides the family, went to the station to see her off,
including Sophie Brown and her father.
“Everything comes to him who waits,” said Grandmother Lois, as she saw
the captain coming down the street. “Captain Taft’s arctics have their
proper background at last.”
Lois and Jessie felt very lonely after Grandmother Lois had departed
with the witch kitten, and it was hard to tell which of them they
missed the most. As for Minnie, she was quite unhappy for a day,
and searched the house for Mittens restlessly, and then, with the
philosophy of her race, she adapted herself to the inevitable. It was
not long before she was consoled for her loss by the arrival of three
kittens, all of them black with white breasts and paws.
“It is too bad they are all just alike,” said Lois, as she and her
mother and Jessie inspected the basket that held Minnie’s children.
“I think it is very fortunate,” said Mrs. Page, “for it will be just
as well to keep only one this time, and there will be no trouble in
deciding which it is to be.”
“You are only going to keep one! Oh, mother!” Lois’s face had a
horror-stricken expression. “We must keep them all!”
“It is too hard work to find good homes for them. It will be much
kinder not to try to bring them up, than to have to give them poor
homes later.”
“When I grow up,” said Lois energetically, “I am going to keep as many
cats and kittens as I like. No kitten will have to be sent away.”
“I am glad it will be some years before you are grown up,” said her
mother. “Now, children, to me these kittens are as alike as three peas
in a pod, but you may choose the one you would rather keep, if you have
a preference.”
A closer inspection showed that each one had an individual charm.
“This one is a little beauty,” said Jessie. “See, it has a pink nose,
and a white line that runs up the face.”
“But it has not half as pretty feet as this darling thing,” said Lois,
picking up a scrap of a kitten. “Now that kitten you have, Jessie, has
white shoes on in front and white stockings behind, while this has four
white shoes.”
“All right, we’ll save that one.”
“It would be a wicked shame not to keep this little fellow,” said Lois,
taking up the third kitten. “He is bigger than any of the rest, and his
coat is such a glossy black, and he has such pretty white stockings
behind and white shoes in front; he and the pink-nosed one would make a
fascinating pair. Oh, mother, why can’t we keep them all? Three is such
a small number. There were five kittens at Hollisford.”
“But we have not as much room for them here.”
“Mother, it seems as if there were enough sad things in life that had
to be,” said Lois, “without making such unhappiness for Minnie and
Jessie and me. I will promise to find good homes for them all, if you
will only let them live.”
“Well, dear, I tell you what I will do. I will give you until the end
of the week, and if you can have suitable homes engaged for them by
that time, I will let you keep them all.”
Lois and Jessie were delighted with this decision, and they
immediately began to rack their brains, to consider where they could
place Minnie’s children to the best advantage.
“I wonder if Mrs. Draper would take one,” said Lois. “She is very
kind-hearted, and she only has Gem. Let’s go round and ask her.”
But, tender-hearted as Mrs. Draper was, she had the same extraordinary
point of view concerning cats that seemed to be shared by most grown
people, namely, that one cat is enough for one household.
“Perhaps Mrs. Donnelly will take one,” Mrs. Draper suggested. “Although
they are so poor, they are very kind to animals, and they lost their
cat at the time of the fire.”
And so the children went around to the forlorn, bare rooms that were
the temporary home of Mrs. Donnelly and her son Joe Mills, and her six
Donnelly children.
The little girls went up three flights of narrow, dark stairs, nearly
running into the refrigerator in the entry, and knocked on Mrs.
Donnelly’s door.
She opened it a crack and peered out to see who was there, and when she
found it was only Jessie and Lois, she flung the door open hospitably.
“Come right in, children. I thought you was the insurance man, and I
did not have anything for him this week. Evelina,” to a small child
who was sitting on the floor, “get up and come to speak to these little
girls, and you stop making such a racket, George Thomas. Excuse the
wash-tub being in the middle of the room; it rained so hard the first
of the week, I didn’t get round to my washing.”
Meanwhile, Jessie was taking in every detail of the poor little room,
and with her usual desire to help, she was wondering what she could
do to make them a little more comfortable. She quickly decided that
this would not be a happy home for one of the black pussies, and was
wondering what excuse she could give for the call.
“We have come to see if you would like to engage a kitten,” said Lois,
who had waited for Jessie to speak first. “We heard you lost yours.”
“I don’t want the bother of any more cats. There’s altogether too many
of them round here now. My! the cat-concerts that go on in the alley
back of us! George Thomas, I told you not to touch the molasses. You
are a bad boy. I shall have to whip you. Beulah! you just let the table
alone.”
Jessie and Lois sadly left the Donnelly mansion, feeling that one more
dream had failed to come true. On the way home they stopped at the
grocery store to ask the grocer to let them know if he heard of any
one, on his rounds, who wanted a kitten, but he was very discouraging.
“We have two kittens here in the store we want to find homes for,” he
said.
In recess at school, the next day, Lois asked first one child and then
another if she wanted a kitten.
“You can never think of but one thing at a time, Lois Page,” said Ethel
Smith. “I’m sick to death of hearing about your cat and her kittens.”
“Did you say you had a kitten to dispose of?” Miss Benton asked. “We
want one very much; I have been trying to find a black one, but I will
take anything I can get, as I don’t want to wait much longer.”
“These are black,” said Lois eagerly, “only they have some white on
them; white breasts and paws, and white spots on their faces. Will that
make any difference?”
“No; I suppose they will catch mice just as well.”
Lois and Jessie were in a very happy frame of mind, as they went home
from school. To have so successfully found a home for one of their
protégées gave them new courage.
In the afternoon, Miss Greenleaf, Jessie’s music-teacher, came to give
her a lesson, and was taken out to inspect the kittens. Miss Greenleaf
was young, with a round face and figure, and large eyes that looked
almost like those of a child. She was very much fascinated by the
kittens. “I must have one,” she said. “Why, they are exactly alike,
aren’t they? You will have to call them the Trio Club, and I will give
them musical names. This little thing with the pink nose seems very
full of life; we’ll call her Presto, and the big one can be Andantino,
and the middle-sized one Allegro. The darling things! I will engage
Presto; she is the prettiest.”
After that, Lois felt happier. To break into a little company dignified
by such a name as the Trio Club, and ruthlessly to destroy a creature
called Andantino or Allegro, seemed too hard-hearted a thing for her
mother to do.
And yet Lois still had a somewhat insecure feeling, and so she
continued to bore every one she met by saying, “I don’t suppose you
happen to want a young kitten, do you? A black one with the dearest
white paws? We have three of them, and we call them the Trio Club.”
Finally, at the end of the week, Lois had to go to the dentist to have
a tooth filled. She dreaded it very much, and the fact that both her
mother and Jessie went with her gave her but little comfort. As Lois
sat waiting in the outer room until the last patient should leave, she
thought how much she was going to be hurt, and how hard it was that
holes came in teeth. There were many things about the arrangement of
the world that Lois could not understand.
She picked up a magazine that lay on the table and began to turn the
leaves. It was a magazine with pictures in it, and some of them were
very pretty, but they failed to distract her mind. Then she looked out
of the window at the men and women who were passing. Did they all have
fillings in their teeth? Finally, the other patient went out and the
awful moment came when Lois mounted the dentist’s chair. After all, it
did not really hurt her much to have the tooth filled. It was expecting
all the time that she was going to be hurt that was the worst part.
“You have very good teeth,” said the dentist, as he polished off the
filling. He had such a kind expression that a sudden idea seized Lois.
“We have three black kittens at home,” she said; “they are almost
exactly alike, so we call them the Trio Club, but mother does not want
us to keep any, unless we have homes engaged for them all. You don’t
happen to want a young kitten, do you?”
“That is exactly what I do want,” said the dentist.
[Illustration: THE TRIO CLUB]