majority vote every time on who should have the
bed and the chairs and the table and one thing or 'nother. If I
sat down I sat on a cat. If I went to bed I laid down on cats, and
when I turned them out and turned in myself they came and laid down
on ME. I slept under fur blankets most of June. And as for
eatin'-- Well, every time I cooked meat or fish they sat down in a
circle and whooped for some. When I took it off the fire and put
it in a plate on the table, I had to put another plate and a--a
plane or somethin' heavy on top of it or they'd have had it sartin
sure. Then when I sat down to eat it they formed a circle again
like a reg'lar band and tuned up and hollered. Lord a-mercy, HOW
they did holler! And if one of the kittens stopped, run out of
wind or got a sore throat or anything, the old cat would bite it to
set it goin' again. She wan't goin' to have any shirkin' in HER
orchestra. I ate to music, as you might say, same as I've read
they do up to Boston restaurants. And about everything I did eat
was stuffed with cats' hairs. Seemed sometimes as if those kittens
was solid fur all the way through; they never could have shed all
that hair from the outside. Somebody told me that kittens never
shed hair, 'twas only full grown cats did that. I don't believe
it. Nate Rogers' old maltee never shed all that alone; allowin'
her a half barrel, there was all of another barrel spread around
the premises. No-o, those cats was a good deal of a nuisance.
Um-hm. . . . Yes, they was. . . ."

He paused and, apparently having forgotten that he was in the
middle of a story, began to whistle lugubriously and to bend all
his other energies to painting. Miss Hunniwell, who had laughed
until her eyes were misty, wiped them with her handkerchief and
commanded him to go on.

"Tell me the rest of it," she insisted. "How did you get rid of
them? How did Mr. Rogers come to take them back?"

"Eh? . . . Oh, why, you see, I went over to Nate's three or four
times and told him his cat and kittens were here and I didn't feel
right to deprive him of 'em any longer. He said never mind, I
could keep 'em long as I wanted to. I said that was about as long
as I had kept 'em. Then he said he didn't know's he cared about
ever havin' 'em again; said he and his wife had kind of lost their
taste for cats, seemed so. I--well, I hinted that, long as the
tribe was at my house I wan't likely to have a chance to taste much
of any