A borrowed sister

The first evening was the cosiest that Lois had ever known. It seemed like a party, having three at supper instead of two. Lois looked across the table at Jessie, and thought how wonderful it was that she was not merely spending one night with them, as she often did, but at least a year of nights.

After tea, when they sat before the fire in the parlor, Mrs. Page began to read Scott’s “Talisman” aloud, and only those who are used to being the solitary audience can know the rapture of sharing the pleasure with another listener. Even when not a word was said it was an intense joy just to look across at Jessie’s expressive face. Presently a piercing mew was heard, and Lois opened the door for Minnie, her cat. Minnie had been spending her evenings in Lois’s lap of late.

“Sweetheart,” Lois said remorsefully, “it was too bad that I forgot all about you. She is perfectly devoted to me,” she explained to Jessie; “sometimes I will find her waiting by my chair, and the moment I sit down she hops into my lap.”

“The dear little thing!” said Jessie. “Come, Minnie,” she called caressingly, “come and say good evening to me. I am going to live here now.”

Then a strange thing happened; Minnie, the constant, devoted Minnie, walked across the room, past Lois, and jumped into Jessie’s lap.

“Dear, friendly little pussy,” said Jessie.

“She likes the chair you are in, and your gown is woollier than Lois’s,” said Mrs. Page practically.

“Oh, mother, you don’t understand Minnie,” protested Lois. “She knows how nice Jessie is, and she wants to make her feel at home.”

Nevertheless it was something of a trial to have Minnie’s affections divided with another.

That night after they went to bed the two children talked so late that Mrs. Page finally came to the door and stopped them by saying that if they were going to talk so long every night she should have to put Jessie in the spare room. Early in the morning the happy chatter began again, and Mrs. Page noticed what a different expression her little girl had as she came into the dining-room with her arm around Jessie’s waist. Jessie was almost a year older than Lois and she was much taller. She was not pretty, but she had such a wholesome, bright face that her friends never thought of her as plain, and then her golden hair was a great attraction. Lois wished that she herself had golden hair. She had said so that morning, as Jessie stood before the bureau brushing her yellow locks.

“Would you like my nose and my freckles as well as my hair?” Jessie asked, turning around with a smile, “because, if you would, I should be glad to give them to you.”

“Oh, Jessie, you dear, dear thing!” said Lois, giving her a hug.

And so the new order began, and as the happy days sped by, Mrs. Page rejoiced in the success of her experiment. As for Jessie herself, it was hard at first to get used to the contracted life in a country town, for heretofore her time had been divided between New York and the free out-of-door life of Brierfield Farm, three miles from the village. When the spring days began to lengthen and the buds to swell, and the birds found their way back from the south, Jessie often longed for the house on the edge of the woods, for the pony on which she rode bare-back, for her faithful collie dog, but most of all for her light-hearted father and mother and her older sister, with whom she had wandered through the fields and woods as contentedly as if they were of her own age. Now all was sadly changed, for her father, who was once the merriest of the company, was under the dark cloud of illness, and the ocean divided her from him and her mother, while Cicely was at Bryn Mawr.

Gradually, however, Jessie adjusted herself to life under the new conditions, and as she was very fond both of Lois and Mrs. Page, she soon felt entirely at home.

Everything conspired to make her feel so, even Minnie, who added to the good cheer of the household by presenting the family with a pair of kittens.

If kittens were not quite the absorbing interest to Lois that they had been before Jessie came, they were a great event, and she and Jessie visited the wood-cellar with joy. Mrs. Page said that each of the children could have a kitten for her own, until it was old enough to be given away.

Now there was not the slightest doubt that one kitten was so much prettier than the other that Lois had a struggle in her own mind as to whether to give Jessie the beauty of the family or to keep it. As an only child everything had formerly revolved around Lois, and now there was always some one else to be considered,—not that this fact in the least dampened her pleasure in Jessie’s society.

“This one is the prettiest,” said Lois, holding up a white and gray kitten beautifully marked. “See her little white face with the gray hair parted in the middle, and the gray shawl on her back that looks as if it were just tumbling off. It is that lovely, silvery gray like blue fox.”

“Yes, it is one of the prettiest kittens I ever saw,” said Jessie.

“The other isn’t very pretty,” said Lois. “Of course I always love tiger cats, but it isn’t marked so prettily as Minnie is; it has a smoochy, mixed-up face.”

“No, it isn’t so pretty, but it is a dear,” said Jessie.

Lois nerved herself for a great sacrifice. “Jessie, you must have the maltese and white kitten,” she said.

“I? Oh, no, Minnie isn’t my cat. I don’t mind, truly, which I have. Anything in the shape of a darling furry kitten will suit me.”

“And you really don’t mind?” Lois began slowly.

“Why, of course I don’t. What difference does it make so long as they are both here?”

Now it made a great deal of difference to Lois, for she liked to have a thing for her very own. For a fortnight the kittens led a placid life in the wood-cellar, and then they were moved up into the play-room, where Lois had her doll house. It was then that the children began to get the real good of the kittens.

“There is something very queer about your kitten’s front paws,” said Lois to Jessie one afternoon. “They look so big and clumsy.”

“Why, it has got two more toes than it ought to have!” Jessie exclaimed.

It made Lois feel uncomfortable to see these extra toes. It was as if a person had five fingers and two thumbs.

“It was so dark in the wood-cellar I never noticed. Poor Jessie! Don’t you want to change?”

“No, indeed! It is my kitten. If I had a child that turned out to be funny-looking I wouldn’t want to change it, and besides, why shouldn’t you have the best-looking kitten?”

“But it seems so selfish of me,” sighed Lois.

“Don’t let’s say anything more about it.”

“Does it make you feel crawly to see its six toes?” Lois asked anxiously.

“No, I think it is quite interesting. It is so unlike any one else’s kitten.”

Lois always preferred things that were just like other people’s, but she was thankful that Jessie felt differently.

Presently Mr. Morgan, Ellen’s father, came to make a call. Mrs. Page was out, but Lois and Jessie saw him coming up the steps. Mr. Morgan was one of the few people of whom Lois was not afraid. She had loved him dearly ever since she had first seen him, a year ago.

“He is going away. Maggie hasn’t told him we are in,” she said in a disappointed voice.

“He is probably making a lot of parish calls, and can’t stop to bother with children,” said Jessie.

“I am sure if he knew I was at home he would want to see me.” Lois ran down the stairs and out of the front door and caught up with him, just as he reached the gate.

“Oh, Mr. Morgan, please come back,” she cried breathlessly. “Jessie and I are at home, and there are some kittens I know you would like to see. We are your parishioners just as much as mother is,” she added.

“Well, if I have new parishioners, for the kittens are new, I suppose, I shall surely have to come back, for I always make it a rule to call on new parishioners the first fortnight after they come to town.”

Lois laughed. “I meant that Jessie and I are your parishioners,” she explained gayly.

“Well, Jessie,” said Mr. Morgan, taking both her hands in his, “it is a great pleasure to have you so near us. And now I am to see the kittens?”

“We’ll bring them down to you,” said Jessie.

“Minnie would be nearly out of her mind if we did. You won’t mind coming upstairs, will you, Mr. Morgan?” Lois asked.

“I want you to find a name for my kitten,” Lois said after they reached the play-room. “You gave Gem and Jane such beautiful names.”

She handed him the lovely gray and white one.

“What a beauty this is!” he said. “It seems to have on a chinchilla shawl, like the one my aunt used to wear. Suppose you call her Chinchilla. Chilly will make a good nickname.”

“The other is Jessie’s,” Lois told him. “It is rather plain and it has six toes.”

Mr. Morgan inspected the small morsel of fur gravely.

“It is a witch kitten,” he announced. “How fortunate you are, Jessie! A double-pawed kitten is always supposed to bring its possessor the rarest luck. Suppose you call it Mittens. I had a witch cat named Mittens when I was a boy.”

“And did you have great luck?” Lois asked. She was already beginning to wish that the double-pawed kitten belonged to her, but speedily stifled this selfish thought, for dear Jessie deserved all the luck she could get.

“Yes. I had a very serious illness while he was with us.”

“I don’t call that good luck,” Lois said dolefully.

“Perhaps you would have died if it hadn’t been for the witch kitten,” Jessie suggested, with a smile.

“That was the way I looked at it,” said Mr. Morgan gravely. “Then our barn caught on fire, and part of it burned, but we got the animals out and the house did not catch. There was the witch kitten again. If it hadn’t been for him we might have lost everything; and I had trouble with my eyes that year, and had to leave school, and the out-of-door life made me strong and healthy. Altogether, there was no end to the debt of gratitude that I owed that kitten, for without him I might have thought I was unlucky.”

Jessie gave Mittens a little squeeze. “I am so glad I have a witch kitten,” she said.