Chapter 19

STRANGE QUARTERS



THE PEDDLER that took Miss Kitty Cat away in his cart drove long into the night. Inside the basket into which her captor had popped her, Miss Kitty kept her wits at work. She knew that there were many twists and turns as they creaked up the hills and rattled down the other side of them. Then there were level stretches where the peddler held his horse to a swinging gait that fast put long miles between them and Farmer Green's place in Pleasant Valley.

"Dear me!" Miss Kitty thought. "What a tramp I'll have getting back home again!" For already she was planning to return to the farm. She didn't care if they did need a good mouser at the stranger's house. They needed one just as much at Farmer Green's.

"If Mrs. Green has to depend on traps to take care of the mice she'll soon be eaten out of house and home," Miss Kitty mused. "The minute that fat Moses Mouse knows I'm gone he'll be as bold as brass."

At last the wagon left the hard road and pulled up in a dooryard. A dog barked. And Miss Kitty heard voices.

"I've brought you something in here that you'll like," said the peddler as he handed Miss Kitty's basket to somebody. "But don't look at it out of doors or it'll get away."

Later, inside the house, a woman let Miss Kitty out of her prison.

"What a big cat!" she exclaimed. "Where did you get her?"

"Oh, I picked her up on the road," said the peddler. "She looked as if she wanted a ride," he chuckled. "I think she was hunting along an old stone wall."

"She'll find hunting enough here," said his wife. "This house is overrun with mice. I'll just put her down cellar and let her work for her supper." Then she gave Miss Kitty a toss down the cellar stairs and slammed the door behind her.

It was no wonder that Miss Kitty Cat was angry.

"A fine way to treat a guest!" she spluttered down there in the dark. "That woman might have set out a little milk for me. It would have tasted good, after my long ride in that stuffy basket." Miss Kitty couldn't help thinking what a fine home she had had at Farmer Green's and how good Mrs. Green had always been to her.

Even Johnnie Green--though he was a boy--had petted her oftener than he had pulled her tail.

But Miss Kitty was too hungry to sit long at the foot of the cellar stairs in thought.

She soon heard faint rustlings squeaks, and scratchings around her. And though she didn't care to oblige the woman upstairs in any way, Miss Kitty lost no time in providing a hearty meal for herself.

Then she lay down on an old sack and slept for a while.

And just before the roosters began to crow she had found a broken pane in a cellar window.

"What