A borrowed sister

Winter came early that year, and there was a heavy snowstorm on the day when Grandmother Lois and Mittens left town. In spite of this, however, several people, besides the family, went to the station to see her off, including Sophie Brown and her father.

“Everything comes to him who waits,” said Grandmother Lois, as she saw the captain coming down the street. “Captain Taft’s arctics have their proper background at last.”

Lois and Jessie felt very lonely after Grandmother Lois had departed with the witch kitten, and it was hard to tell which of them they missed the most. As for Minnie, she was quite unhappy for a day, and searched the house for Mittens restlessly, and then, with the philosophy of her race, she adapted herself to the inevitable. It was not long before she was consoled for her loss by the arrival of three kittens, all of them black with white breasts and paws.

“It is too bad they are all just alike,” said Lois, as she and her mother and Jessie inspected the basket that held Minnie’s children.

“I think it is very fortunate,” said Mrs. Page, “for it will be just as well to keep only one this time, and there will be no trouble in deciding which it is to be.”

“You are only going to keep one! Oh, mother!” Lois’s face had a horror-stricken expression. “We must keep them all!”

“It is too hard work to find good homes for them. It will be much kinder not to try to bring them up, than to have to give them poor homes later.”

“When I grow up,” said Lois energetically, “I am going to keep as many cats and kittens as I like. No kitten will have to be sent away.”

“I am glad it will be some years before you are grown up,” said her mother. “Now, children, to me these kittens are as alike as three peas in a pod, but you may choose the one you would rather keep, if you have a preference.”

A closer inspection showed that each one had an individual charm.

“This one is a little beauty,” said Jessie. “See, it has a pink nose, and a white line that runs up the face.”

“But it has not half as pretty feet as this darling thing,” said Lois, picking up a scrap of a kitten. “Now that kitten you have, Jessie, has white shoes on in front and white stockings behind, while this has four white shoes.”

“All right, we’ll save that one.”

“It would be a wicked shame not to keep this little fellow,” said Lois, taking up the third kitten. “He is bigger than any of the rest, and his coat is such a glossy black, and he has such pretty white stockings behind and white shoes in front; he and the pink-nosed one would make a fascinating pair. Oh, mother, why can’t we keep them all? Three is such a small number. There were five kittens at Hollisford.”

“But we have not as much room for them here.”

“Mother, it seems as if there were enough sad things in life that had to be,” said Lois, “without making such unhappiness for Minnie and Jessie and me. I will promise to find good homes for them all, if you will only let them live.”

“Well, dear, I tell you what I will do. I will give you until the end of the week, and if you can have suitable homes engaged for them by that time, I will let you keep them all.”

Lois and Jessie were delighted with this decision, and they immediately began to rack their brains, to consider where they could place Minnie’s children to the best advantage.

“I wonder if Mrs. Draper would take one,” said Lois. “She is very kind-hearted, and she only has Gem. Let’s go round and ask her.”

But, tender-hearted as Mrs. Draper was, she had the same extraordinary point of view concerning cats that seemed to be shared by most grown people, namely, that one cat is enough for one household.

“Perhaps Mrs. Donnelly will take one,” Mrs. Draper suggested. “Although they are so poor, they are very kind to animals, and they lost their cat at the time of the fire.”

And so the children went around to the forlorn, bare rooms that were the temporary home of Mrs. Donnelly and her son Joe Mills, and her six Donnelly children.

The little girls went up three flights of narrow, dark stairs, nearly running into the refrigerator in the entry, and knocked on Mrs. Donnelly’s door.

She opened it a crack and peered out to see who was there, and when she found it was only Jessie and Lois, she flung the door open hospitably. “Come right in, children. I thought you was the insurance man, and I did not have anything for him this week. Evelina,” to a small child who was sitting on the floor, “get up and come to speak to these little girls, and you stop making such a racket, George Thomas. Excuse the wash-tub being in the middle of the room; it rained so hard the first of the week, I didn’t get round to my washing.”

Meanwhile, Jessie was taking in every detail of the poor little room, and with her usual desire to help, she was wondering what she could do to make them a little more comfortable. She quickly decided that this would not be a happy home for one of the black pussies, and was wondering what excuse she could give for the call.

“We have come to see if you would like to engage a kitten,” said Lois, who had waited for Jessie to speak first. “We heard you lost yours.”

“I don’t want the bother of any more cats. There’s altogether too many of them round here now. My! the cat-concerts that go on in the alley back of us! George Thomas, I told you not to touch the molasses. You are a bad boy. I shall have to whip you. Beulah! you just let the table alone.”

Jessie and Lois sadly left the Donnelly mansion, feeling that one more dream had failed to come true. On the way home they stopped at the grocery store to ask the grocer to let them know if he heard of any one, on his rounds, who wanted a kitten, but he was very discouraging. “We have two kittens here in the store we want to find homes for,” he said.

In recess at school, the next day, Lois asked first one child and then another if she wanted a kitten.

“You can never think of but one thing at a time, Lois Page,” said Ethel Smith. “I’m sick to death of hearing about your cat and her kittens.”

“Did you say you had a kitten to dispose of?” Miss Benton asked. “We want one very much; I have been trying to find a black one, but I will take anything I can get, as I don’t want to wait much longer.”

“These are black,” said Lois eagerly, “only they have some white on them; white breasts and paws, and white spots on their faces. Will that make any difference?”

“No; I suppose they will catch mice just as well.”

Lois and Jessie were in a very happy frame of mind, as they went home from school. To have so successfully found a home for one of their protégées gave them new courage.

In the afternoon, Miss Greenleaf, Jessie’s music-teacher, came to give her a lesson, and was taken out to inspect the kittens. Miss Greenleaf was young, with a round face and figure, and large eyes that looked almost like those of a child. She was very much fascinated by the kittens. “I must have one,” she said. “Why, they are exactly alike, aren’t they? You will have to call them the Trio Club, and I will give them musical names. This little thing with the pink nose seems very full of life; we’ll call her Presto, and the big one can be Andantino, and the middle-sized one Allegro. The darling things! I will engage Presto; she is the prettiest.”

After that, Lois felt happier. To break into a little company dignified by such a name as the Trio Club, and ruthlessly to destroy a creature called Andantino or Allegro, seemed too hard-hearted a thing for her mother to do.

And yet Lois still had a somewhat insecure feeling, and so she continued to bore every one she met by saying, “I don’t suppose you happen to want a young kitten, do you? A black one with the dearest white paws? We have three of them, and we call them the Trio Club.”

Finally, at the end of the week, Lois had to go to the dentist to have a tooth filled. She dreaded it very much, and the fact that both her mother and Jessie went with her gave her but little comfort. As Lois sat waiting in the outer room until the last patient should leave, she thought how much she was going to be hurt, and how hard it was that holes came in teeth. There were many things about the arrangement of the world that Lois could not understand.

She picked up a magazine that lay on the table and began to turn the leaves. It was a magazine with pictures in it, and some of them were very pretty, but they failed to distract her mind. Then she looked out of the window at the men and women who were passing. Did they all have fillings in their teeth? Finally, the other patient went out and the awful moment came when Lois mounted the dentist’s chair. After all, it did not really hurt her much to have the tooth filled. It was expecting all the time that she was going to be hurt that was the worst part.

“You have very good teeth,” said the dentist, as he polished off the filling. He had such a kind expression that a sudden idea seized Lois.

“We have three black kittens at home,” she said; “they are almost exactly alike, so we call them the Trio Club, but mother does not want us to keep any, unless we have homes engaged for them all. You don’t happen to want a young kitten, do you?”

“That is exactly what I do want,” said the dentist.