Mrs. Lynde’s quilts served a very useful purpose that winter. Patty’s Place for all its many virtues, had its faults also. It was really a rather cold house; and when the frosty nights came the girls were very glad to snuggle down under Mrs. Lynde’s quilts, and hoped that the loan of them might be accounted unto her for righteousness. Anne had the blue room she had coveted at sight. Priscilla and Stella had the large one. Phil was blissfully content with the little one over the kitchen; and Aunt Jamesina was to have the downstairs one off the livingroom. Rusty at first slept on the doorstep.
Anne, walking home from Redmond a few days after her return, became aware that the people that she met surveyed her with a covert, indulgent smile. Anne wondered uneasily what was the matter with her. Was her hat crooked? Was her belt loose? Craning her head to investigate, Anne, for the first time, saw Rusty.
Trotting along behind her, close to her heels, was quite the most forlorn specimen of the cat tribe she had ever beheld. The animal was well past kittenhood, lank, thin, disreputable looking. Pieces of both ears were lacking, one eye was temporarily out of repair, and one jowl ludicrously swollen. As for color, if a once black cat had been well and thoroughly singed the result would have resembled the hue of this waif’s thin, draggled, unsightly fur.
Anne “shooed,” but the cat would not “shoo.” As long as she stood he sat back on his haunches and gazed at her reproachfully out of his one good eye; when she resumed her walk he followed. Anne resigned herself to his company until she reached the gate of Patty’s Place, which she coldly shut in his face, fondly supposing she had seen the last of him. But when, fifteen minutes later, Phil opened the door, there sat the rusty-brown cat on the step. More, he promptly darted in and sprang upon Anne’s lap with a half-pleading, half-triumphant “miaow.”
“Anne,” said Stella severely, “do you own that animal?”
“No, I do NOT,” protested disgusted Anne. “The creature followed me home from somewhere. I couldn’t get rid of him. Ugh, get down. I like decent cats reasonably well; but I don’t like beasties of your complexion.”
Pussy, however, refused to get down. He coolly curled up in Anne’s lap and began to purr.
“He has evidently adopted you,” laughed Priscilla.
“I won’t BE adopted,” said Anne stubbornly.
“The poor creature is starving,” said Phil pityingly. “Why, his bones are almost coming through his skin.”
“Well, I’ll give him a square meal and then he must return to whence he came,” said Anne resolutely.
The cat was fed and put out. In the morning he was still on the doorstep. On the doorstep he continued to sit, bolting in whenever the door was opened. No coolness of welcome had the least effect on him; of nobody save Anne did he take the least notice. Out of compassion the girls fed him; but when a week had passed they decided that something must be done. The cat’s appearance had improved. His eye and cheek had resumed their normal appearance; he was not quite so thin; and he had been seen washing his face.
“But for all that we can’t keep him,” said Stella. “Aunt Jimsie is coming next week and she will bring the Sarah-cat with her. We can’t keep two cats; and if we did this Rusty Coat would fight all the time with the Sarah-cat. He’s a fighter by nature. He had a pitched battle last evening with the tobacco-king’s cat and routed him, horse, foot and artillery.”
“We must get rid of him,” agreed Anne, looking darkly at the subject of their discussion, who was purring on the hearth rug with an air of lamb-like meekness. “But the question is — how? How can four unprotected females get rid of a cat who won’t be got rid of?”
“We must chloroform him,” said Phil briskly. “That is the most humane way.”
“Who of us knows anything about chloroforming a cat?” demanded Anne gloomily.
“I do, honey. It’s one of my few — sadly few — useful accomplishments. I’ve disposed of several at home. You take the cat in the morning and give him a good breakfast. Then you take an old burlap bag — there’s one in the back porch — put the cat on it and turn over him a wooden box. Then take a two-ounce bottle of chloroform, uncork it, and slip it under the edge of the box. Put a heavy weight on top of the box and leave it till evening. The cat will be dead, curled up peacefully as if he were asleep. No pain — no struggle.”
“It sounds easy,” said Anne dubiously.
“It IS easy. Just leave it to me. I’ll see to it,” said Phil reassuringly.
Accordingly the chloroform was procured, and the next morning Rusty was lured to his doom. He ate his breakfast, licked his chops, and climbed into Anne’s lap. Anne’s heart misgave her. This poor creature loved her — trusted her. How could she be a party to this destruction?
“Here, take him,” she said hastily to Phil. “I feel like a murderess.”
“He won’t suffer, you know,” comforted Phil, but Anne had fled.
The fatal deed was done in the back porch. Nobody went near it that day. But at dusk Phil declared that Rusty must be buried.
“Pris and Stella must dig his grave in the orchard,” declared Phil, “and Anne must come with me to lift the box off. That’s the part I always hate.”
The two conspirators tiptoed reluctantly to the back porch. Phil gingerly lifted the stone she had put on the box. Suddenly, faint but distinct, sounded an unmistakable mew under the box.
“He — he isn’t dead,” gasped Anne, sitting blankly down on the kitchen doorstep.
“He must be,” said Phil incredulously.
Another tiny mew proved that he wasn’t. The two girls stared at each other.
“What will we do?” questioned Anne.
“Why in the world don’t you come?” demanded Stella, appearing in the doorway. “We’ve got the grave ready. ‘What silent still and silent all?’” she quoted teasingly.
“‘Oh, no, the voices of the dead Sound like the distant torrent’s fall,’” promptly counter-quoted Anne, pointing solemnly to the box.
A burst of laughter broke the tension.
“We must leave him here till morning,” said Phil, replacing the stone. “He hasn’t mewed for five minutes. Perhaps the mews we heard were his dying groan. Or perhaps we merely imagined them, under the strain of our guilty consciences.”
But, when the box was lifted in the morning, Rusty bounded at one gay leap to Anne’s shoulder where he began to lick her face affectionately. Never was there a cat more decidedly alive.
“Here’s a knot hole in the box,” groaned Phil. “I never saw it. That’s why he didn’t die. Now, we’ve got to do it all over again.”
“No, we haven’t,” declared Anne suddenly. “Rusty isn’t going to be killed again. He’s my cat — and you’ve just got to make the best of it.”
“Oh, well, if you’ll settle with Aunt Jimsie and the Sarah-cat,” said Stella, with the air of one washing her hands of the whole affair.
From that time Rusty was one of the family. He slept o’nights on the