treet, with all
the winds of heaven blowing about them, should have satisfied even Sammy
Pinkney.

The boy pulled the basket cautiously to the extreme end of the
wire--until the carrier bumped against the clapboards under his own
bedroom window. He saw Sandyface raise her head again and glare around.
Half asleep until this time she had not realized that she and her babies
were being so marvelously transported from their own home to the cottage
where Sammy resided.

"Crickey!" exclaimed the boy suddenly. "If mother comes out and sees
'em--or if that there bulldog Buster hears those cats meowing, there'll
be trouble over there."

He started anxiously to draw the cats and the carrier back to the Corner
House. In some way the line by which he drew the basket became fouled at
the other end; or the pulleys on the wire became chocked. Sammy could
not tell just what the trouble was, anyway.

But to his dismay the basket stuck midway of the line. High over the
middle of Willow Street it stopped, and Sandyface was now standing up
and telling the neighborhood just how scared she felt for her babies and
herself.

"Lie down, cat!" the perturbed Sammy cried to her. "You'll fall
overboard and drown--I mean, break your silly neck! S-st! Lie down!"

Tom Jonah, the old house dog, appeared suddenly below and began to bark.
Billy Bumps came galloping around the house, shook his horns in
disapproval, and "bla-ated" loudly.

Linda came to the kitchen door, beheld the cat in the basket high on the
wire, and seemed to understand the cause of the trouble with uncanny
certainty.

"That iss the Pinkney boy!" she cried. "If he was _my_ brudder--"

Mrs. MacCall, called by the clatter, ran out. Aunt Sarah Maltby, even,
appeared at the door, while Uncle Rufus limped up from the hen houses
mildly demanding:

"What's done happen' to dem cats? Don't I hear dem prognosticatin'
about, somewhar's?"

"Sammy Pinkney!" cried Mrs. MacCall, the first to spy the boy at the
window of the little girls' play-room, "what are you doing up there?"

"He's got the cat and the kittens in that basket. Did you ever?"
exclaimed Aunt Sarah.

"You naughty boy!" commanded Mrs. MacCall, "you pull that thing right
back here and let poor Sandyface out."

"I can't, Mrs. MacCall," woefully declared the boy who wanted to be a
pirate.

"Then pull it over to your house," said the housekeeper.

"I--I can't do that either," confessed Sammy.

"Why not, I should ad