Sally in her fur coat

Sally was sure she liked houses. She liked the house where her new friends lived from the very start. A corner under a piazza where the rain could come through the cracks in the boards overhead had never seemed her idea of what a home should be, nor did she care to spend most of her time out-of-doors looking for food which was hard to find. So she settled down quite contentedly, and it did not trouble her that, while Elvira and Miss Winifred were in New Hampshire, Miss Harvey kept her and Oxford Gray, Junior, in the house. She always spoke of the three ladies in the following order, Miss Harvey, Elvira, and Miss Winifred. Her brother told her that she should speak of Miss Winifred first because she was the oldest and the owner of the house, and of Miss Harvey next, and Elvira last, because she was the youngest of the three, but Sally persisted in her own way.

‘I love Miss Harvey best, so I speak of her first, and I love Miss Winifred less than the others, so she comes last.’

It was not until Elvira and Miss Winifred had been at home some days that Miss Harvey said to Sally one morning, ‘You are such a good little kitten, I am going to let you through into the other part of the house while I am dusting the rooms.’

Sally had always wondered what was on the other side of the door. She had heard from her father that the rooms were large and that there were many pictures of Miss Winifred’s ancestors hanging on the walls. He had told her there was a portrait of Miss Winifred’s mother over the mantelpiece in the hall. Sally had never seen a picture, and so she looked at them with great interest. So that little girl in a fur cape was Miss Winifred’s mother! How odd it seemed that a lady so old herself had had a mother who was once a little girl! There were other portraits in the parlor and dining-room, all pictures of Miss Winifred’s relations, she was sure.

She looked in vain for any pictures of her own ancestors. Surely so many Furbush-Tailbys had lived in the house, she should think Miss Winifred would have framed portraits of them hanging on the walls. Her great-great-grandmother, Martha Furbush-Tailby, would have made a nice picture, and her great-grandfather, William Furbush-Tailby, the poet, would certainly have been an ornament to the walls. And these relations of Miss Mann’s looked so queer in their old-fashioned clothes, while her own ancestors would have looked as much up-to-date as Oxford Gray, Junior, himself, for she had been told they all had the gray tiger markings and broad white shirt-fronts like himself, and every one of them had white feet. And so far as tails were concerned, they were all noted for the fine tiger markings; she herself was proud of her tail. Yes, it would have made the sober green walls of the parlor far pleasanter to look at if there had been portraits there of her ancestors.

At last she saw a picture with a house and church in the distance, and there, walking on the grass in the foreground, were two ladies, and a little boy, and a dog. Here at last was an animal. The ladies wore long skirts that trailed on the grass and bonnets that hid their faces, and the little boy wore odd clothes, too, but the dog looked exactly like one that Sally had met in the Wild Wood and scampered away from.

‘Yes,’ said Sally, ‘it only shows how sensible and superior animals are, to be so made that they never have to change with the fashion.’

There was another room that was filled with books. It had a desk in it and Miss Winifred’s typewriter, and a sofa that looked as if it would be a pleasant place for a kitten to take a nap. There were window-seats, too. The sun was pouring in on them. Sally jumped up on one and settled down. The sun felt warm and pleasant on her back.

‘It is a friendly house,’ said Sally. ‘I like it, but some of the pictures would look so much nicer with kittens in them. The little girl with the fur over her shoulders would look much sweeter if she had a kitten in her arms. I am sure she would have loved a nice, furry kitten.’

There was a mantelpiece in this room that Sally longed to explore, for there were candelabra on it, one at either end with two candles in each of them and dangling metal things hanging down from them that Sally longed to play with. She knew they could swing, for she saw Miss Harvey dusting them, so while Miss Harvey was dusting the table, she jumped up on the mantelpiece by way of the sofa and began to play with them.

When she went back into the kitchen, she told Oxford Gray, Junior, about the charms of the friendly house. He was greatly interested when he heard of the mantelpiece with the candlesticks with the swinging pendants.

‘I think maybe Miss Harvey wouldn’t like you to touch them,’ said Sally.

‘Miss Harvey!’ He spoke a little contemptuously. ‘Why should I do any more harm than you?’

So the kittens watched their chance, and one day they slipped through the door that was left partly open so that Miss Harvey could hear the telephone in the other part of the house.

Oxford Gray, Junior, hardly paused to look at anything in the other rooms. He did not care for the portraits of Miss Winifred’s ancestors.

‘They all have on such old-fashioned clothes,’ he said. ‘Our ancestors would look much more up-to-date.’

‘That is what I thought myself,’ said Sally.

Oxford and Sally went into the library where the candelabra stood on the mantelpiece.

‘There’ll be a candlestick for each of us to play with,’ said Sally.

Oxford thought it would be exciting to get to the mantelpiece ahead of Sally, and Sally wanted to get there first, so they had a mad race to the sofa and then they gave a jump that landed them on the mantelpiece. Alas! the mantelpiece was not wide enough for the pair of them, and the first thing they knew was that they had knocked one of the candlesticks off the mantelpiece and had tumbled off themselves and were lying on the floor with the ruins of the broken wax candles.

The kittens were very much frightened. Sally rushed under the sofa and Oxford Gray, Junior, took refuge under a chair.

Elvira, who was in the kitchen, heard the noise, and came in to see what had happened. They heard her step in the hall.

‘If we are very quiet,’ said Sally, in her thought-transference language, ‘Elvira will never find us. She’ll think the candlestick just fell off of itself.’

‘For mercy sakes!’ said Elvira, as she saw the broken candles on the floor. ‘You little rascal, what have you been doing?’ and she fixed her eyes on Oxford Gray, Junior. ‘I suppose Sally is somewhere about. Oh, yes! there she is under the sofa.’

‘It wasn’t our fault,’ said Oxford. ‘It is just the fault of that old mantelpiece—it’s too narrow. Miss Winifred ought to have made her house more convenient for kittens.’

But, alas! Elvira couldn’t understand his language.