SALLY AND THE LOUD SPEAKER
Sally spent a great deal of time in the parlor. In the morning she
often had it to herself, for Miss Winifred was usually out of the
house, or writing on her typewriter. ‘The parlor is mine in the
morning,’ she told Oxford.
‘You can go into your old parlor all you like,’ said he. ‘I like my
kitchen best.’
Sally suspected that his scorn of the parlor came because he was not
allowed to go into it, as he was not as quiet and well-behaved as Sally.
In the evening Miss Harvey often sat there reading the newspaper to
Miss Winifred. Sally was often bored by the newspaper, and she would
get up in Miss Harvey’s lap and sit on it so that she could not read.
Miss Harvey would say in her gentle voice, ‘Come, Sally, please get off
my paper.’
Sally would pretend that she did not understand, and she would put her
furry paws around Miss Harvey’s neck and press her furry face against
her cheek.
‘Sally, you are a nuisance,’ were the unkindest words Miss Harvey
ever said, and Sally would once more pretend she did not understand.
Sometimes Miss Harvey would stop reading if it was almost bedtime;
Sally always hoped this would happen, and sometimes she would gently
put Sally on the center table, where she would settle for a nap in the
friendly warmth of the electric lamp.
Once in a great while there would be an interesting piece of news in
the paper. Once she heard something about the President’s pets, and
there was a wonderful occasion when there was something worth while
in the paper and Sally learned that the President’s wife was fond of
pets, and that once, before she was in the White House, she had found
a mouse-hole in the room she was in, in some hotel, and had trained
the mice and given them food. Sally’s eyes fairly glistened. What a
pity that she had not been near that mouse-hole herself! It would have
been so easy to catch a tame mouse, and if she caught one, Oxford could
never be so scornful again.
Sometimes Miss Harvey would put down the paper and she and Miss
Winifred would have a friendly chat, and it was at one of these times
that Sally learned the piece of news she told Oxford the next day as
she and Oxford were sunning themselves on the back porch after an
exhausting morning of exercise.
‘I hear that Miss Winifred is going to have a loud speaker,’ she said.
‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said he; ‘there are enough loud speakers
around the house as it is. I have sensitive ears.’
‘Miss Harvey has a sweet voice,’ said Sally, ‘only every one has to
talk louder to Miss Winifred, and I suppose she wants some one to talk
to her when the others are busy.’
‘You would do very well for that job,’ said Oxford; ‘for a small cat I
never heard such a rasping, powerful voice.’
‘Yes, Miss Winifred always hears me,’ said Sally.
‘I have a very gentlemanly mew,’ said Oxford; ‘any one would know I had
Furbush-Tailby blood just to hear my mew. But, to hear you and not see
you, Sally, no one would suspect for a moment that you were a lady.’
‘They’d know it if they saw me,’ said Sally. ‘Miss Harvey often says I
am a perfect little lady.’
‘I wonder if the loud speaker will be a man or a woman,’ Oxford said.
Sally wondered, too, and whenever she was in the parlor and any one
called, she listened to the voice of the caller with great interest.
One afternoon a gentleman called with a strong, loud voice. He called
Miss Mann ‘Cousin Winifred.’ Sally was sure he was the loud speaker and
that he had come to stay.
After some conversation that did not interest Sally, he fixed his eyes
on her as she sat in the corner on her register and he said, ‘You have
a cat, I see.’
‘She isn’t exactly mine,’ said Miss Winifred, ‘but she does me the
honor to live in my house; she has a brother who lives here also, and
there is another cat, Peter, who thinks he lives with us because he
takes all his meals here and sleeps here on cold, stormy nights, but
Oxford Gray, Junior, is certain he does not and drives him away.’
At last the conversation was becoming interesting. Sally wondered what
the loud speaker would say. She had an idea by the way he had looked at
herself that he did not realize the importance of cats.
‘I went to call on two ladies the other day,’ he said, ‘who were
longing to go back to the State of Washington where they used to live,
but they said they could not go because the journey would be too much
for their cat, who was old and settled in his ways.’
Sally wished she knew the ladies. They understood something of life and
saw things in their right proportion.
‘I suggested to them that they could give their cat away, or send him
to the Animal Rescue League,’ the loud speaker went on.
Sally became alarmed. If this were, indeed, the loud speaker, and he
came here to live, what chance was there for Oxford and herself? Would
he not make a clean sweep of all who wore fur coats? She was relieved
to find by Miss Winifred’s next question that he had a wife and several
children. He surely could not be leaving them to come and live here
just to talk to Miss Winifred. Presently he took his hat and went to
the door, shaking hands with Miss Winifred, and saying it had been good
to see her, and never giving one glance in Sally’s direction.
‘It was rude of him,’ Sally said to herself, ‘when I am a perfect lady.
It never does any harm to be polite.’
A few days later, something that had a strange appearance was on the
piano. Sally found it there one afternoon. It looked like a very small
bureau with knobs in odd places, and two things that looked like
clocks. Sally wondered what it could be. There was a small round table
close by the piano, and on this was standing a long black thing, shaped
something like a huge calla lily.
The next afternoon, when Sally was upstairs, she heard a concert going
on in the parlor. There were several shrill voices and it sounded very
much like the concerts Sally’s cat friends sometimes gave. But these
took place at night. Sally was of a curious nature, and she hurried
down to see what was going on. To her surprise when she reached the
parlor not a soul was to be seen except Miss Winifred. Sally had never
heard her sing, and the sound seemed to be coming out of the black
calla lily, for the piano was shut. Presently Miss Winifred touched
one of the knobs and the music came to an end. Sally was more and more
mystified. Then Miss Winifred touched a knob and Sally heard a man say,
‘This is the friendly voice of Boston.’ Sally agreed that Boston had a
nice voice, but he was nowhere to be seen. She looked around the room,
but could see no one. She went under the piano, thinking Boston might
be there. Some one was giving a talk about grapefruit juice. Sally did
not care about the talk, for she liked milk for her drink. Finally she
got up on the table on which the big black calla lily stood and looked
down into it. The voice sounded so loud, Sally was frightened. She
skipped down and ran out into the kitchen to tell Oxford about it.
‘There’s a man that’s only got a voice and no body, and he lives in the
black thing on the table, and his name is Boston,’ she told him. ‘And
sometimes he sings.’
‘That’s the radio,’ said Oxford. ‘I heard Miss Harvey talking to Elvira
about it. They have them in all the houses now. Even Peter knows about
them.’
‘You didn’t know anything about it the other day,’ Sally ventured.
‘It is a long time since the other day,’ said Oxford, ‘and since then
I have given my entire spare time to research. I have tried hard to
learn all I could about the loud speakers and radios. Mr. Gardiner has
one and I heard him talking to Miss Harvey. If one has masculine brains
and sharp ears, there is no end to what one can learn. Sally, you are
behind the times.’
[Illustration]