SALLY HAS HER WISH
One morning some weeks later, Elvira had the surprise of her life. She
came down into the kitchen and looked around for the two cats. Oxford
was stretched out on his woolen blanket under the table, but Sally
was nowhere to be seen. Elvira remembered that she had left the lower
drawer of the kitchen dresser open thinking that Sally might like to
sleep there for a change, so she went over and looked in. For a moment
she was startled and thought she must have seen wrong and that Sally
had caught two mice. But although the furry objects were the smallest
kittens she had ever seen and hardly larger than mice, there was no
mistaking their fur coats. One was black with four very tiny white
paws and a white breast, and the other was white with a tiger tail and
a tiger blanket on its back.
‘Miss Harvey,’ Elvira called, ‘did you ever see anything so sweet?’
Sally’s whole expression had changed. Instead of having a sad little
face, she looked proud and happy. It seemed as if she were saying: ‘See
what I have got for wishing for it? I have had to wish for a very long
time, but at last I have got just what I wanted, twins, a brother and
a sister, just like Oxford and myself, and the darlings shall have a
happier kittenhood than we had. And she said to herself,
If I cannot have a mother, a mother I will be
With some darling, furry children of my own,
The furriest, purriest kittens, the most harum-scarum kittens,
The liveliest, gayest kittens ever known.
It seemed this time as if Miss Harvey understood everything she said,
for she remarked, ‘Dear Sally has got her wish at last; see how
blissfully happy she looks, Elvira!’
They decided it would be wiser not to mention the kittens to Miss
Winifred for a few days, as she had a friend staying with her who was
taking all of her thoughts at present. So the kittens were almost a
week old before Miss Winifred knew about them.
One morning Elvira said, ‘Sally has two little kittens.’
‘Kittens!’ Miss Winifred said in astonishment. ‘I am very sorry to hear
it.’
‘Sorry to hear it,’ said Elvira, ‘and you think you are fond of cats.’
‘Four seem too many to have in one house, and they will grow into cats,
but we can keep them for a time and then send them to the Ellen Gifford
Home, or else find good homes for them.’
‘Would you like to see them?’ Elvira asked.
Miss Winifred went into the kitchen, and Elvira put one of the tiny
creatures into her hand and then the other. No one with a heart for
kittens could help being touched by the sight of these furry creatures
and the anxious expression of their mother’s face as she watched Miss
Winifred, for she was not sure of her.
[Illustration]
‘Please don’t drop them,’ she pleaded in her own language. ‘Please
don’t even think about homes for them later on. This is a good home,
and I will be a good mother. I do so want their kittenhood to be happy
and not sad like mine.’
Miss Winifred put the kittens down very gently.
‘At any rate, they can’t leave their mother for some weeks,’ she said.
It was not long before these tiny objects were scampering about the
kitchen floor, getting in front of Elvira’s feet just as their mother
and their uncle had done, for they found a way of getting out of the
drawer of the dresser. They made a stepladder of their mother, and,
climbing on her back, gave a flying leap to the floor and then chased
each other about. Patty, the little tiger kitten, was more lively than
her brother Eben, and she would turn a somersault as she reached him
and then they would skip about in high glee, and wrestle together.
There had never been such gay kittens in Miss Winifred’s house.
‘It is as good as a tonic having them around,’ said Miss Winifred, one
morning as she visited the kitchen.
‘Certainly they are like a tonic to their mother,’ said Miss Harvey. ‘I
never saw any one more changed.’
Oxford was not at all interested in his niece and nephew, so he spent
more of his time than usual away from home. It was the gentle Peter who
was all ready to be friendly, and when the two kittens went dancing up
to him, he was pleased. But Sally, who feared he would do them harm,
raised her powerful voice to call them to her, and then gave Peter the
thrashing that Oxford had meant to give him. She seemed possessed by
fury as she flew at him and put her claws in his fur.
‘Look at your perfect lady now,’ said Elvira to Miss Harvey.
‘She is a good mother. She is only afraid he will hurt her children,’
said Miss Harvey.
Sometimes in the days that followed, Sally wished that her desires
had not been granted so completely. She loved having her kittens and
she was glad they were having a happier kittenhood than her own, that
was so sombre and sad. But why had she ever asked for ‘harum-scarum’
kittens, or the ‘liveliest, gayest kittens ever known’? Surely it would
have been enough to wish for ‘Kittens’! Sally was not sure that it was
ever wise to wish too hard for anything, and yet she liked to watch her
children playing so fearlessly, for kind Elvira and dear Miss Harvey
let them frisk about the kitchen as they pleased. One day Eben got into
one of Elvira’s rubbers that were in the entry. He peered out from this
pleasant spot as if to say, ‘See the nice little house I have found,
it just fits me.’ Baskets and boxes they appropriated for their own,
and on cold nights, after the kitchen fire was out, Sally joined them
and they slept warm and comfortable in a pasteboard box just the right
size for three.
[Illustration]
When they ran up Elvira’s back and pulled out her hairpins, or landed
on the clock shelf in the kitchen in search of their catnip mice and
knocked down a few trifles, Sally said, ‘Children, children, why can’t
you be quiet and well-behaved, as your uncle and I were!’
‘But, mother, you once told us you knocked a candlestick off the study
mantelpiece,’ Patty reminded her.
‘That is true,’ said their mother, who was a very fair cat.
‘You said you climbed up Elvira,’ said Eben; ‘that is what put the idea
into our heads.’
‘I never did it but once or twice, not every day. I was a much quieter
kitten.’
‘Because you were half-starved,’ said Patty. ‘Mother, just be a kitten
with us. Be young with your children.’
[Illustration]