CHAPTER EIGHT
A LOSS AND SOME GAINS
B
BUNNY Grey had not been well since the time when the water came into the cellar, and she afterwards developed a strange kind of bunny “grip,” which made her most melancholy.
Franklin was too much absorbed in the sale of his chickens to pay her much attention, and one morning was startled to find Kenneth tying a black stocking on the cellar door.
“I told you she was worse,” Kenneth sniffed, and took Franklin down to see her still form laid out in a grape-basket, with her hind legs tied up with pink ribbon, and her head pillowed in parsley.
“Yes, but I thought she was getting better,”Franklin said. “She was gaining flesh. Just see how round her stomach is!”
“Yes, but I did that,” Kenneth explained. “She was quite thin before I began.”
“Began what?” asked Franklin, astonished.
“Blew her up with the bicycle pump. You see she had sniffles, and couldn’t breathe from the outside, so I thought if she was full enough of air, she could breathe from the inside. You don’t s’pose it hurt her, do you?”
Franklin opened his mouth wrathfully, to tell Kenny what a cruel thing he had done; but seeing how anxious the poor little red-eyed face had become, said instead: “Well, I don’t believe it did her anygood, so I wouldn’t try it again, if I were you. But very likely she’d have died anyway. You see she looks quite pale around the nose.”
Eunice and Kenneth had the funeral that afternoon, with Cyclone hitched to the express cart. But it did not end well, because Cyclone got into a fight with another dog, and smashed the cart, and some little street children ranaway with the grape-basket, thinking that Bun Grey’s legs were asparagus. So none of the funeral returned but the two chief mourners, who planted some potatoes in the grave that they had dug for Bun Grey.
“You see ’t would be such a pity to waste that nice hole,” Eunice said. “I’m glad it wasn’t Sam.”
Kenneth sniffed again, but said nothing, and Franklin admired him so much for the way in which he bore his loss, that the next day he shook some of his hen-money out of the red bank, and went down-town.
“More rabbits, I suppose,” Mrs. Wood thought patiently, as she began to wrap up dishes to go to the lake.
But it was not rabbits this time, it was worse; and, as usual, it was something that Mrs. Wood had never dreamed of telling him not to get. Guinea-pigs had been discouraged, so they were not guinea-pigs who greeted Kenneth from behind the wire of their little box at breakfast the next morning. No, they weremuch smaller and more slender, particularly as to tail, of which they possessed half a yard apiece. And they were white and pink-eyed, with what Eunice called “whittle-noses,” and, in other words, they were rats.
“You see they’ll be so handy to carry around,” Franklin said, with a beaming smile. “They’re such small animals.”
And Kenneth’s joy was enough to make one forget even that they were rats. His grief over Bun Grey faded, in the contemplation of those long pink tails. And when he found that their owners would actually run up his arm to his shoulder, and nip his ear, his delight was complete. It was great fun, too, to watch them scramble up and down inside the wire netting. One caught such strange views of their noses and chins.
“When you lookupat a rat’s chin, it’s weak,” Franklin said; “they must have been made to be seen from above.”
Weejums left her two new little kittens, Mustard and Elijah, to come and examine thelatest arrivals. They were rats, she decided,—her nose told her that much,—but so pale and peculiar! She wondered if pink eyes would taste any better than black; but several smart cuffs on the ears persuaded her that pink eyes were meant only to look at, so she walked off very stiffly, and sat down “back-to.”
School was closed now, and Kenneth played with his new pets nearly all the time. They grew so tame that he could put them down to run on the floor, and catch them again quite easily.
But one day, before the family started for their cottage at the lake, one of the rats disappeared.
“I think he’s got into the wall,” Kenneth said; “’cause I heard him scratching round in there when I went to bed. Do you s’pose he’ll starve to death, Mother? There won’t be much to eat after we go.”
But Mrs. Wood said that she did not think there was any danger of Snowdrop’s starving, or even feeling hungry where he had gone, because,although she never told the children, she knew where that place was.
She and Biddy were sitting up late the night before, finishing the packing, when they heard some one in the kitchen say, “O-ow, yerr-or-wow-wow-O-wow!” and Mrs. Wood recognized the voice of her tortoise-shell grandchild,—the reserved and haughty Weejums. She went out to see what was the matter, and found the cat writhing in what appeared to be agonies of stomach-ache. “So that’s where he went!” she said, rubbing the last resting-place of Snowdrop with tender care. Castor-oil and a hot-water bag followed, and the next day Weejums was fit to travel. But as long as she lived, the sight of a white rat was to her, what the memories of watermelon and strawberries are to certain people after a sea-voyage.
Weejums travelled in a separate basket, with Mustard and Elijah, and as a new home had been found for Minoose, there was only one other basket of cats to go to the lake.
Minoose had gone to the principal of thechildren’s school, accompanied by his plush mouse, and she had immediately become as foolish over him as any one could have desired. Soon after leaving home he sent a beautiful set of jewelry to Weejums—locket, chain, and earrings—of the kind that comes mounted on a card at the toy-shops, for twenty-five cents. Weejums looked lovely in the locket, but as her ears had never been pierced, she was obliged to use the earrings as tail clasps.
She wore them to the lake, and Clytie and Ivanhoe wore bright worsted collars made on a “knitter,”—Ivanhoe’s red, and Clytie’s light blue. Clytie, being fair, usually wore blue, although pale green was almost equally becoming; and this being a great occasion, Ivanhoe was allowed to wear his toy watch, and the glass lion’s-head stickpin that had come in a penny prize package.
Cyclone and the cats always travelled with the family, but John Alden and the rabbits had to go out on the load with the furniture.
“I couldn’t find a box high enough for Johnny to stand up in,” Franklin said, as he brought in his tool chest. “Guess he’ll have to scooch this trip.”
But the limberness of Johnny’s legs when he was turned loose at the lake showed that the trip had not really injured him. The rabbits also were allowed to run where they pleased, and gave delighted skips and kicks through the fern. Weejums cast one glance at the carpenters who were finishing some repairs in the house, and departed to the woods, where she remained for three days. She had never cared for the society of men, possibly because there were none in the family.
While she was away, Mustard and Elijah learned to eat fish, and spit at her when she returned. They were orange-colored babies, with corn-flower blue eyes, and looked like nice, warm muffins.
Every morning, Eunice and Kenneth fished off the dock, while Franklin pulled around in his half of the boat, and put on airs. Henever went out very far unless some older person was with him, for both Mrs. Wood and Mrs. Lane had suffered so much from anxiety over the boat, that she was named the “Worry.” But Fred Lane came out from town every night, and he and Franklin took wonderful rows in the sunset, sailing with umbrellas, taking the swells from the steamers, and doing other delightful and dangerous things.
“A NICE WARM MUFFIN”
“A NICE WARM MUFFIN”
Weejums was dreadfully afraid of the water at first, and would run back and forth in the road, howling, whenever the children went down to the dock. She seemed to think there was small chance of ever seeing them again. But when she found that fish came out of the water, her dislike of it changed to warm affection. She would tease and coax until Eunice went down to catch her a fish, and would begin eating it almost before it was off the hook. The first fish she always finished herself, and the next she took up to the kittens.
Sometimes, when the boat was tied to the dock, she would jump into it, and sit placidly in the stern, enjoying the slight motion made by the ripples, and apparently admiring the view. When the door of the locker was left open, she would creep inside for a nap, and once or twice she went rowing with the boys, before they discovered her presence.
Ivanhoe and Clytie preferred to play on land, and indulged in regular gymnastic feats through the trees and shrubbery. WheneverMrs. Wood went anywhere in the evening, they both escorted her, and dashed out from unexpected places with saucy tails, and whiskers stiff with mischief. They liked to tease Cyclone, by making him think that they were weasels and woodchucks, and they frightened people dreadfully who passed the house at night. But the children’s interest in them and their antics was soon lost in an event of greater importance.
One evening when Mrs. Wood returned from a day in town, she was met at the train by Eunice and Kenneth, each wearing a look of great excitement, and carrying a little rabbit. She knew that Dulcie had a hidden nest somewhere; but these rabbits were too old to be Dulcie’s babies, so she concluded that some one had been sending the children presents.
“Mother!” began Eunice, in breathless tones.
“Oh, Mother!” interrupted Kenneth.
“Mother!” they both said together.
“Yes, dears, they’re perfectly lovely. But where did they come from?”
“Mother—” began Eunice again.
“But, Mother—” broke in Kenneth.
“Oh, Mother!” exclaimed both children together, “they’re Sam’s!”