Shireen: "No, it isn't rats. It is Danger, the butcher's bull-terrier.
He wants killing ever so much. He thinks he can fight any dog, and he
always chases me. But be sure you shake him well up whenever you meet
him. He has one ear slit in two. I managed that for him one day. I'll
sit in a tree and see you open him up, and nobody will be a bit sorry.
Good-bye, you beautiful handsome Cracker. So pleased to have met you.
Just over the way there, in that low-thatched cottage, there is a sick
child, and I am going in to sit and sing to her till she drops off
asleep and forgets her pains and sorrows. Good-bye."
Shireen, it will be seen, quite disarmed dogs by her coolness and her
perfect friendliness. No dog that ever lived would kill a cat who ran
up to meet him in the street and rubbed her head against his chest.
This strange pussy had, however, one or two human enemies as well as the
dog Danger. Almost everyone has, and Shireen could be no exception.
But in her case they were either old wives, who looked upon her with
superstitious dread because she was reported to carry a ruby in one of
her teeth, or they were mischievous boys, who threw stones at her from
that nasty little contrivance called a catapult, or cat-a-pelt, as some
horrid boys call it, because they think it was invented to pelt poor
pussies with.
Shireen, however, had managed hitherto to keep out of their way. She
was very often to be seen in the village street, walking along leisurely
enough, but as soon as that hideous yell was borne along on the breeze,
which told her the boys' school had just been dismissed, pussy increased
her pace and disappeared.
Shireen knew boys. She knew all their tricks and their manners, and she
could have told you that boys were boys all the wide world over.
Well, as she is crossing the street to-day, giving a glance up and down
every two or three seconds to make certain the coast was clear, the
rattle of light wheels was heard.
That was the butcher's cart.
She listened and looked, one paw in the air.
Yes, there was Danger himself coming round the corner with his red
tongue lolling out of his open mouth, for though it was autumn the
weather was warm.
Danger sees pussy almost as soon as she sees him.
"There's that long-tailed white cat again," he says to himself. "Well,
I'll have her this time right enough. Here goes!"
And straight along the road he comes rushing with the speed of a
torpedo.
Shireen doesn't lose her presence of mind. Not a bit of it. She
measures the distance with a glance from Uncle Ben's railing, and
calculates to the tenth part of a second the time it will take her to
reach it.
She wants to make that dog believe that he is sure of her, so that she
may, in triumph and safety, enjoy his chagrin and disappointment all the
more.
On he comes, on and on.
Shireen pretends she doesn't see him.
He is within two yards of her. Oh! he has caught her! No, he hasn't!
One dart, one dive, and she is safe on the other side of Ben's friendly
railing.
He--Danger--can't get through.
Only just his nose, and no more.
And what a fool he was to stick that between the rails. Shireen springs
round like fire from flint.
"Fuss! Fut!"
That blow was beautifully aimed, and poor Danger goes howling off with a
sadly torn nose.
I say _poor_ Danger, because it really was the fault of that wicked
butcher-boy. Dogs are only what men make them.
Shireen is not so young as she was once upon a time, but she feels very
youthful now. And very happy too. She stops for a few minutes to dry
herself in a patch of sunshine, then goes galloping off across Ben's
lawn, making pretences that the withered leaves are mice, and whacking
them about in all directions.
Next moment she has jumped into Ben's hammock.
"Why, old girl," cries Ben, "you're as playful as a kitten. Who would
think, Shireen, that you were over twenty years of age, and had seen
nearly as much of the world as Uncle Ben himself? Well, sit there and
sing to me. Now, that is real soothing, and I'm not at all sure I won't
go to sleep. For at my time of life, Shireen, it's best to take all out
of life you can get."
Ben's hand and book drop listlessly on his breast, and while the autumn
wind goes moaning through the pine trees overhead, keeping up a kind of
sibilant bass to Shireen's song, while his pet cockatoo nods on his
perch near by, the ancient mariner dozes--and dreams.