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Old Mrs. HarrisVI
The day after the Methodist social, Blue Boy didn`t come for his morning milk; he always had it in a clean saucer on the covered back porch, under the long bench where the tin wash-tubs stood ready for Mrs. Maude. After the children had finished breakfast, Mrs. Harris sent Mandy out to look for the cat.
The girl came back in a minute, her eyes big.
"Law me, Miz` Harris, he`s awful sick. He`s a-layin` in the straw in the barn. He`s swallered a bone, or havin` a fit or somethin`."
Grandmother threw an apron over her head and went out to see for herself. The children went with her. Blue Boy was retching and choking, and his yellow eyes were filled up with rhume.
"Oh, Gram`ma, what`s the matter?" the boys cried.
"It`s the distemper. How could he have got it?" Her voice was so harsh that Ronald began to cry. "Take Ronald back to the house, Del. He might get bit. I wish I`d kept my word and never had a cat again!"
"Why, Gram`ma!" Albert looked at her. "Won`t Blue Boy get well?"
``Not from the distemper, he won`t."
"But Gram`ma, can`t I run for the veter`nary?"
"You gether up an armful of hay. We`ll take him into the coal- house, where I can watch him."
Mrs. Harris waited until the spasm was over, then picked up the limp cat and carried him to the coal-shed that opened off the back porch. Albert piled the hay in one corner--the coal was low, since it was summer--and they spread a piece of old carpet on the hay and made a bed for Blue Boy. "Now you run along with Adelbert. There`ll be a lot of work to do on Mr. Holliday`s yard, cleaning up after the sociable. Mandy an` me`ll watch Blue Boy. I expect he`ll sleep for a while."
Albert went away regretfully, but the drayman and some of the Methodist ladies were in Mr. Holliday`s yard, packing chairs and tables and ice-cream freezers into the wagon, and the twins forgot the sick cat in their excitement. By noon they had picked up the last paper napkin, raked over the gravel walks where the salt from the freezers had left white patches, and hung the hammock in which Vickie did her studying back in its place. Mr. Holliday paid the boys a dollar a week for keeping up the yard, and they gave the money to their mother--it didn`t come amiss in a family where actual cash was so short. She let them keep half the sum Mrs. Rosen paid for her milk every Saturday, and that was more spending money than most boys had. They often made a few extra quarters by cutting grass for other people, or by distributing handbills. Even the disagreeable Mrs. Jackson next door had remarked over the fence to Mrs. Harris: "I do believe Bert and Del are going to be industrious. They must have got it from you, Grandma."
The day came on very hot, and when the twins got back from the Roadmaster`s yard, they both lay down on Grandmother`s lounge and went to sleep. After dinner they had a rare opportunity; the Roadmaster himself appeared at the front door and invited them to go up to the next town with him on his railroad velocipede. That was great fun: the velocipede always whizzed along so fast on the bright rails, the gasoline engine puffing; and grasshoppers jumped up out of the sagebrush and hit you in the face like sling-shot bullets. Sometimes the wheels cut in two a lazy snake who was sunning himself on the track, and the twins always hoped it was a rattler and felt they had done a good work.
The boys got back from their trip with Mr. Holliday late in the afternoon. The house was cool and quiet. Their mother had taken Ronald and Hughie down town with her, and Vickie was off somewhere. Grandmother was not in her room, and the kitchen was empty. The boys went out to the back porch to pump a drink. The coal-shed door was open, and inside, on a low stool, sat Mrs. Harris beside her cat. Bert and Del didn`t stop to get a drink; they felt ashamed that they had gone off for a gay ride and forgotten Blue Boy. They sat down on a big lump of coal beside Mrs. Harris. They would never have known that this miserable rumpled animal was their proud tom. Presently he went off into a spasm and began to froth at the mouth.
"Oh, Gram`ma, can`t you do anything?" cried Albert, struggling with his tears. "Blue Boy was such a good cat,--why has he got to suffer?"
"Everything that`s alive has got to suffer," said Mrs. Harris. Albert put out his hand and caught her skirt, looking up at her beseechingly, as if to make her unsay that saying, which he only half understood. She patted his hand. She had forgot she was speaking to a little boy.
"Where`s Vickie?" Adelbert asked aggrievedly. "Why don`t she do something? He`s part her cat."
Mrs. Harris sighed. "Vickie`s got her head full of things lately; that makes people kind of heartless."
The boys resolved they would never put anything into their heads, then!
Blue Boy`s fit passed, and the three sat watching their pet that no longer knew them. The twins had not seen much suffering; Grandmother had seen a great deal. Back in Tennessee, in her own neighbourhood, she was accounted a famous nurse. When any of the poor mountain people were in great distress, they always sent for Miz` Harris. Many a time she had gone into a house where five or six children were all down with scarlet fever or diphtheria, and done what she could. Many a child and many a woman she had laid out and got ready for the grave. In her primitive community the undertaker made the coffin,--he did nothing more. She had seen so much misery that she wondered herself why it hurt so to see her tom-cat die. She had taken her leave of him, and she got up from her stool. She didn`t want the boys to be too much distressed.
"Now you boys must wash and put on clean shirts. Your mother will be home pretty soon. We`ll leave Blue Boy; he`ll likely be easier in the morning." She knew the cat would die at sundown.
After supper, when Bert looked into the coal-shed and found the cat dead, all the family were sad. Ronald cried miserably, and Hughie cried because Ronald did. Mrs. Templeton herself went out and looked into the shed, and she was sorry, too. Though she didn`t like cats, she had been fond of this one.
"Hillary," she hold her husband, "when you go down town tonight, tell the Mexican to come and get that cat early in the morning, before the children are up."
The Mexican had a cart and two mules, and he hauled away tin cans and refuse to a gully out in the sage-brush.
Mrs. Harris gave Victoria an indignant glance when she heard this, and turned back to the kitchen. All evening she was gloomy and silent. She refused to read aloud, and the twins took Ronald and went mournfully out to play under the electric light. Later, when they had said good-night to their parents in the parlour and were on their way upstairs, Mrs. Harris followed them into the kitchen, shut the door behind her, and said indignantly:
"Air you two boys going to let that Mexican take Blue Boy and throw him onto some trash-pile?"
The sleepy boys were frightened at the anger and bitterness in her tone. They stood still and looked up at her, while she went on:
"You git up early in the morning, and I`ll put him in a sack, and one of you take a spade and go to that crooked old willer tree that grows just where the sand creek turns off the road, and you dig a little grave for Blue Boy, an` bury him right."
They had seldom seen such resentment in their grandmother. Albert`s throat choked up, he rubbed the tears away with his fist.
"Yes`m, Gram`ma, we will, we will," he gulped.
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