"Oh, how beautifully long!" cried Edith.

"Long? I should say so! There was a cat-show at Los Angeles last fall, and one cat took a prize for a tail not so long as this by three-quarters of an inch! And Zee only six months old!"

The kitty, wide awake by this time, was holding high revel with a ball of yarn which the tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat had purloined from her mistress's basket.

"Dear thing! Oh, isn't she sweet?" said Edith, dropping on her knees before the graceful creature.

Mrs. McQuilken enjoyed seeing the child go off into small raptures; Edith was fast winning her heart.

"Does your mother like cats?" she suddenly inquired.

"Not particularly," replied Edith, clapping her hands, as Zee with a quick dash bore away the ball out of the very paws of the c.o.o.n cat.

"Mamma thinks cats are cold-hearted," said she, hugging Zee to her bosom. "She says they don't love anybody."

"I deny it!" exclaimed Mrs. McQuilken, indignantly. "Tell your mother to make a study of cats and she'll know better."

Edith looked rather frightened. "Yes'm, I'll tell her."

"They have very deep feelings and folks ought to know it. Now, listen, little girl. I had two maltese kittens once. They were sisters and loved each other better than any girl sisters _you_ ever saw. One of the kittens got caught in a trap and we had to kill her. And the other one went round mewing and couldn't be comforted. She pined away, that kitty did, and in three days she died. Now I know that for a fact."

"Poor child!" said Edith, much touched. "_She_ wasn't cold-hearted, I'll tell mamma about that."

"Well, if she doesn't like 'em perhaps it wouldn't do any good; but while you're about it you might tell her of two tortoise-sh.e.l.l cats I had. They were sisters too. Whiff had four kittens and Puff had one and lost it. And the way Whiff comforted Puff! She took her right home into her own basket and they brought up the four kittens together. Wasn't that lovely?"

"Oh, wasn't it, though?" said Edith. "Cats have hearts, I always knew they did."

"That shows you're a sensible little girl," returned the old lady approvingly. "But you haven't told me yet what your name is?"

"Edith Dunlee."

"I knew 'twas Dunlee--that's a Scotch name; but I didn't know about the Edith. Well, Edith, so you've been to see the gold mine? Pokerish place, isn't it? I hear they're going to bring down the engine from the big plant and try to start it up again."

Edith had no idea what she meant by the "big plant," so made no reply.

Mrs. McQuilken went back to the subject of cats.

"Did you know the Egyptians used to worship cats? Well, sometimes they did. And when their cats died they went into mourning for them."

"How queer!"

"It does seem so, but it's just as you look at it, Edith. Cats are a sight of company. I didn't care so much about them or about birds either when my husband was alive and my little children, but now--"

Again she paused, and this time she did not go on again. Some one out of doors laughed; it was Jimmy Dunlee, and the mocking-bird took up the merry sound and echoed it to perfection.

"Doesn't that seem human?" cried Mrs. McQuilken. And really it did. It was exactly the laugh of a human boy, though it came from the throat of a tiny bird.

"My little boys, Pitt and Roscoe, liked to hear him do that," said Mrs.

McQuilken.

Edith observed that she did not say "my boyoes." "Pitt, the one that died in j.a.pan, doted on the mocking-bird. The other boy, Roscoe, was all bound up in the canary."

"Does the canary sing?"

"Yes, he's a grand singer. Just you wait till he pipes up. You'll be surprised. But you remember what I was saying a little while ago about your mother? That zebra kitty--"

Before she could finish the sentence Edith heard the warning tinkle of the tea-bell, and sprang up suddenly, exclaiming: "Good-by, Mrs.--good-by, _madam_, I must go now. You've been very kind, thank you.

Good-by."

And out of the door and away she skipped, leaving her hostess, who had not heard the bell, to wonder at her haste. "She went like a shot off a shovel," said the good lady, taking up her knitting-work. "She seemed to be such a well-mannered little girl, too! What got into her all at once?

She acted as if she was 'possessed of the fox.'"

This is a common expression in j.a.pan, and naturally Mrs. McQuilken had caught it up, as she had caught up other odd things in her travels. She was something of a mocking-bird in her way, was the captain's widow.

"I've taken quite a fancy to Edith," she added, "a minute more and I should have offered to give her the zebra kitty. But there, I shouldn't want to make a fuss in the family. That woman, her mother, to think of her talking so hard about cats! She doesn't _look_ like that kind of a woman. I'm surprised."

Edith ran back to her mother breathless.

"Oh, mamma, I was having such a good time! And she didn't appear to be 'annoyed,' she talked just as fast all the time! But the bell rang while she was saying something and I had to run."

"Had to run? I hope you were not abrupt, my child?"

"Oh, no, mamma, not at all. I said 'good-by' twice, and thanked her and told her she had been very kind. That wasn't abrupt, was it? But oh, that kitty's tail! I forget how many inches and a quarter longer than any other kitty's tail in this state! And they are not cold-hearted,--I mean cats,--I promised to tell you."

Here followed an account of the two cat-sisters, who loved each other better than girl-sisters.

"And think of one of them dying of grief, the sweet thing! Human people don't die of grief, do they, mamma?"

"Not often, Edith. Such instances have been known, but they are very rare."

"Well," struck in wee Lucy, who had been listening to the touching story, "well, I guess some folks would! Bab would die for grief of me, and I would die for grief of Bab; we _said_ we would!"

She made this absurd little speech with tears in her eyes; but Kyzie and Edith dared not laugh, for mamma's forefinger was raised. Mamma never allowed them to ridicule the friendship of the two little girls, who had made believe for more than a year that they were "aunt" and "niece." The play might be rather foolish, but the love was very sweet and true.

Lucy had been thinking all day of Barbara and longing for her arrival. A full hour before it was time for the stage she went a little way up the mountain with Jimmy, and they took turns gazing down the winding, dusty road through a spy-gla.s.s. "I shan't wait here any longer. What's the use?" declared Jimmy.

"She's coming! she's coming! I saw her first!" was Lucy's glad cry. And she ran down the mountain in haste, though the stage, a grayish green one, was just turning a curve at least a mile away.

"Well, you _have_ been parted a good while," said Uncle James, as the two dear friends met and embraced on the coach steps; "a day and a half!"

"I'd have 'most died if I'd waited any longer," said Aunt Lucy, putting her arm around her niece and leading her up the gravel path with the pink "old hen and chickens" on either side.

The little girls were entirely unlike, and the contrast was pleasant to see. Lucy was very fair, with light curling hair:--

"Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds That ope in the month of May."

Bab was quite as pretty, but in another way. She had brilliant dark eyes and straight dark hair with a satin gloss. She was half a head shorter than her "auntie," though their ages were about the same. People liked to see them together, for they were always sociable and happy, and loved each other "dearilee."

"Oh, Bab," said wee Lucy, "I had such a _loneness_ without you!"