POLYPOD'S CAT.

BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.

Her real name was Mary; but there never was such a family for nicknames as the Dyers. Why they ever called pretty Nelly, the oldest girl, "Norken," instead of her royal name Eleanor, nobody could tell; or sober John, "Jinky," or Alice, the "big little girl," as Mary called her, "Pob" and "Phœbus"; but they did, and there are a great many things in this world one has to take as they are, without rhyme or reason. But she always was called Polypod by all the family; and when a stranger said, "What is your little girl's name?" whoever he asked only said, "Mary," and laughed.

Polypod was a dear little soul, as rosy and jolly and loving as a child could be; but sometimes she wanted a playmate. Nelly taught her every day, the school was so far off; and Jinky and Pob always took their dinner when they went, and were too tired or too grown up to play with Polypod when they came home at night; so she racked her brains for amusement. The Dyers lived on a great farm, and back of the house was a hill covered with woods. Polypod had a wild garden, as she called it, under the edge of these woods, where she planted all the pretty wilding flowers, adder's-tongue, squirrel-cups, Dutchman's-breeches, spring-beauty, Quaker-ladies, wet-root, jack-in-the-pulpit, columbine, blue and white violets—everything she could find, except trailing arbutus, which she could not make grow at her pleasure any more than other people can. Then she had a play-place in the big wood-shed for rainy days; a house furnished with broken crockery and nutshells, and inhabited by squash dollies and ladies made out of hollyhock petals. She could stay here all summer whenever she was tired of her garden, or it rained; but in winter was the hard time. She had her rag doll Miss Rosalinda Squires, to be sure, but there was no place to play except in the kitchen or the sitting-room, and Grandpa Dyer always sat by the sitting-room stove asleep, or smoking his pipe, or trying to read the newspaper; he did not like little girls; he was too old, and they made such a noise. Then everybody else was in the kitchen, and mother kept it so awfully clean! All Polypod could do was to go under the dinner table with Rosalinda and play they were living in a cavern, or shut up in jail; for when the leaf was down, and the brown cover on, they found it naturally quite dark under that table.

"Oh dear!" she said, one day, "I do wish I had somefing or somebody to p'ay with me."

Nelly came into the room just as she spoke, and heard her. It never had occurred to anybody in that house that Polypod could be lonely before. She was a little thing, and they all loved her, but they didn't stop to think much about her. If she had warm clothes, plenty to eat, and a dolly, why shouldn't she be satisfied?

"Why, child," said Nelly, "haven't you got the doll?"

"Yes, I've got her, an' she sits there an' sits there, Norken; she don't go a 'peck, she don't talk a singal wingal mite, not the very leastest word. I wish somefing would make her mad an' strike, she keeps so still;" and Polypod heaved a deep sigh as she looked at Rosalinda with melancholy disapproval.

"Mother," said Nelly next day, "can't Polypod have a kitten? The child gets lonesome for something to run about and play with her."

Polypod's eyes sparkled under the table where she was just putting Rosalinda to bed with the measles and scarlet fever—maladies she had herself experienced, and knew how to treat.

"I don't know," answered mother, stopping on the door-sill to consider. "She might for 't I know, but I'm afraid 'twould get into the keepin'-room and plague grandpa. I guess 'tain't best to resk it; she can play with Dolly;" so she shut the door behind her, and Nelly went out into the shed.

"Danpa's real mean an' horrid," sobbed Polypod, making a very bad face at the wall behind which he sat, the better to express her hurt feelings. She did not know how tired old folks are, how their bones ache, and their eyes get dim after they have lived and worked so long and so hard; and poor grandpa could not remember how he felt when he was a rosy naughty little boy himself. He did not think of much now but how to keep warm and quiet, and not have anybody push against his chair, or hit his lame foot that lay up on a carpet stool all the time. No wonder he did not like kittens, they jump about so everywhere!

But before spring came grandpa died one day, and there was a funeral. Nobody cried much: grandpa was too old to cry for; they all knew—all the grown-up people—that he must be glad not to ache any more, and he had been pretty cross, poor old man. The day of the funeral Polypod noticed her mother putting some black ribbon on Nelly's felt hat, and trying on to her own head a new black bonnet.

"What is you putting that ugly black bow on to Norken's bonnet for, muvver?" she asked.

"It's mourning, Polypod; people wear black when their folks die."

"What for?" curtly inquired the child.

"Oh, well, I s'pose to show they feel bad."

"I don't feel bad one mite," said Polypod, thoughtfully. Her mother in her busy hurry did not hear this comment, or Polypod would have been reproved, no doubt. But nobody puts black on so small a child for the loss of a grandfather, so Polypod made no more remarks.

The next week Nelly came into the sitting-room where the child had for once established herself in a corner of the old chintz-covered sofa.

"Polypod," she called out, "what do you suppose I've got in my apron?"

Polypod did not stop to guess; she jumped down and peeped in at a corner.

"Oh, Norken, a real live kitty! Oh! oh! oh! My vely own kitty?"

"Yes, you little goose," laughed Nelly; she could not comprehend what a wonderful and delightful treasure the kitten was to her little sister.

Polypod was not lonely any more; she hugged her precious kitty with all the tender passion of her warm little heart, she paddled out to the barn in all weathers to get it new milk, she taught it all sorts of tricks, it slept on her bed at nights, played hide-and-seek with her in the day-time, knocked Rosalinda Squires down from her silent state every time it found that neglected lady anywhere, and made things lively generally in the Dyer house. Even Pob and Jinky, solemn as they were with age and learning, could not help laughing at kit's tricks, and father Dyer, tired, and wet, and hungry as he might be when he came in from doing the chores, owned gruffly that, "That 'ere kitty's the spryest of all the critters I ever did see."

This was great praise from father, the most silent of men generally, and so little given to expressing his feelings that Polypod could not remember that he ever kissed her but once, and that was the day grandpa died.

Great was his mistress's joy when kit caught his first mouse; she did not like mice; but oh! how she cried and scolded when he fetched in a young robin panting, quivering, bleeding, its beautiful eyes dark with death. Polypod was almost ready not to love kit any more, but the tender little heart soon forgave her darling on the wistful plea that he was "only a kitty."

When Polypod's treasure was only a year old, one day he was missing; nobody could find him. He had taken to sleeping in the shed under the floor, and Jinky had made a bed there for him, to please his little sister, by taking up a board of the floor, and putting down an armful of hay and a bit of carpet. Kit liked this much; he had become a great hunter, and he could range the woods on moonlit nights after squirrels and winter birds, and then seek his retreat for a morning nap, going in from the outside through a hole in the rough stone foundation of the wood-shed. But he always came in for his breakfast; and to-day when Polypod called, there was no answer. Bobbin, as she had named him, did not come running to the step, his tail high in air, the end curved like a fish-hook, his ears forward, and his yellow eyes shining; nor did he come all day. It had snowed very hard the night before, and perhaps he had gone into a neighbor's barn, they thought; when it cleared up he would come trotting in as usual. But he did not. Day after day went by; somebody asked the neighbors, to no purpose, if they had seen the cat; somebody else trudged over to the lonely barn, two miles away, where they stored the surplus hay, but Bobbin was not there. Polypod cried till her eyes ached.

"Mercy me! don't take on so, child," said mother; "there's cats enough, dear knows. Pa'll fetch ye another kitty the next time he goes to the 'ville."

"Muvver! I want my kitty!" Polypod indignantly answered.

In about two weeks from Bobbin's disappearance a heavy rain and thaw set in: drifts disappeared, the earth was brown again, and out from that hole in the stones crept—who but Bobbin! thin as a shingle cat, eyes big as saucers, feeble, staggering, rough: but Bobbin! Now Polypod sobbed for joy; she would not let anybody touch him; she made him a flannel bed, and fed him with a tea-spoon till his voice came back, and he purred a faint song of gratitude. Polypod loved him now better than ever; and as his loose skin filled out, and his beautiful dark gray coat, dashed and striped with black, regained its gloss and depth, his attachment to the child seemed to increase; he followed her everywhere, into the woods after the first shy blossoms that laid off their gray furs and smiled up at the sun, down into the swamp edge to pick cowslip greens for dinner, into the lots for wild strawberries, and even up on the ledge for red raspberries; if anybody wanted Polypod, they said, "Where's the cat?" Mother looked on him with much favor now, for he not only rid the house of mice and rats as well as ever Whittington's cat could have done it, but he also caught all the little green or striped snakes that lurked in and about the old garden, which mother "could not a-bear!" It was very pretty to see him toss the coiling, squirming creatures high up in air, and then watch them with his handsome head cocked aside, and his paw held up ready for a pat as soon as they moved, or another toss. He never ate them, which pleased Polypod, for she felt as if she never could kiss him again after he had swallowed a snake.

It was in the late autumn that Bobbin most distinguished himself, however. Polypod had been quite ill; a touch of fever, the doctor said. She had been taken out of her tiny bedroom opening from mother's into the spare chamber up stairs, and put into that big old-fashioned bed that had a tester and white dimity curtains at the corners. One night Nelly had given her her medicine, and set down the tallow candle on the light stand, drawing the curtain to keep the light out of Polypod's eyes, when she was called down stairs to see one of the neighbors.

Half an hour after, as she was talking very busily, Bobbin came running into the room and began to walk round her, pull at her dress with his paw, go to the door, come back, rub against her, look up at her with great asking eyes, and at last mewed so impatiently that the neighbor said, "What upon earth ails that cretur? Seems as though he wanted suthin real bad."

"Oh! I guess he wants to get up into Polypod's room," said Nelly; "he sets by her dreadfully; but I was real sure I left him on to the foot of her bed, and I know I shet the door."

"Mebbe you'd better let him go up," suggested the visitor, who found Bobbin's importunity rather distracting to a very important conversation he wanted to begin.

So Nelly opened the door, and Bobbin rushed up the front stairs, and began to mew loudly at the top.

"I did shut the door, certain sure," laughed Nelly, going up to open it, and turning quite pale at the smell of fire, and then at the sight of Polypod calmly asleep in the bed, though the end of one pillow and the dimity curtain next the light stand were blazing and smoking away with a good-will.

Polypod might have burned or smothered to death but that Nelly had left the window over the shed roof open a little way when she went down, the night was so unusually warm; and probably Bobbin, seeing something wrong, had gone out here, jumped off the shed roof, and, making his way into the front door, gone to the first person he found for help. Now this is a true story, or I shouldn't dare to tell it. And thanks to Bobbin, and the visitor, who came tearing up when Nelly screamed, "Oh, George!" and pulled down the curtain very quickly, and stamped on it, there was no great harm done; for Polly's dose of skull-cap tea kept her quiet even when she awoke with the noise.

But nobody ever saw a cat so admired and well treated as Bobbin was after that. Nothing in the Dyer house was too good for him; and when, that same winter, he was chased by a dog of the tin peddler's, and fell into the well, from which he was fished out next day dead and dripping, Polypod's heart was broken. It was small comfort that Jinky dug a neat little grave under the Bell pear-tree, and put up a shingle head-stone, with the tender inscription:

"Here lies Bobbin, Pretty as a robin, Smart as a whip. Why did he slip, Sad to tell, And get drowned in the well?"

This was all good, as far as it went, but Polypod cried harder and harder. At last she went to mother.

"Muvver," she piteously sobbed, "ca-can't I have a b-black bonnet to w-w-wear to meetin'?"

"Land alive, child! what under the canopy do you want a black bonnet for?"

"Why, you s-said folks w-wore 'em when any-b-body they loved was d-dead, to show they was s-sorry, and I'm aw-awful sorry 'bout Bobbin; more'n I ever w-was before—ev-ever so much!"

Mother upset the churn, and spilled the buttermilk on the spot. It was a hasty movement did it, but anything was better than to have dear little Polypod see her smile. She compromised for a black bow on the child's hood, on the ground that nobody in meeting was acquainted with Bobbin, and if the bow was noticed it might be thought that some distant relative of the family was dead. Polypod could only sob, "W-well, I don't c-care so vely much. I fe-feel real b-black inside."

Dear Polypod! may she live to grow up in the faith that it is better and truer than any depth of outward mourning to rend the heart, not the garments—in her own quaint phrase, to "feel real black inside!"