Spice Box by Grace Livingston Hill Read Free Book Online

extravagant either, yet somehow the idea did not greatly appeal to her. It didn’t seem reasonable. She had a home of her own for the first time in her life and she ought to stay in it and enjoy it.
    Enjoy it? That sounded like a duty, and she had been trotting around all her life at the point of that bayonet of duty. And how could she ever enjoy those gloomy rooms anyway, those ugly furnishings, that Aunt Abigail-Uncle Jonathan atmosphere of everything? It was all very well for them. They liked that sort of thing. They had been brought up to it and the things were theirs, accumulated through the years. But her soul cried out for other surroundings. Or, at least, why should she not change these as much as she could?
    She sat straight up on the bed and faced the audacious thought. What would Aunt Abigail think if she knew that the ungrateful recipient of all her worldly possessions was contemplating a wholesale destruction of all doilies, antimacassars, and patchwork cushions? That was as far as she got with that first approach to the subject. Doilies and patchwork cushions. Oh yes, and those horrible pictures,
Wide Awake
and
Fast Asleep
, with their unnaturally healthy countenances and impossible auburn curls. She would take them down and burn them in the kitchen range or the furnace the first thing in the morning, frames and all, so that no one would ever suspect, if any prying neighbor should chance to come in and take notice.
    Having solaced herself with this dire resolution she lay down and slept, while below the street clattered on with its Sabbath noise, and the group under her window plotted mischief.
    An hour later she awoke with a start and realized that there was a loud banging at her front door, accompanied by the most unearthly yowling of a cat. At once the thought flashed into her mind—
Ernestine! Those terrible boys!
—and she sprang from her bed and hurried over to her window.
    It was indeed Ernestine in the hands of the enemy. A group of small boys were tying her plumy tail to the front doorknob. Their grimy, hurried hands knotted the bit of clothesline clumsily but firmly in place, while Ernestine, with tooth and claw, defended herself as best she could, meanwhile giving forth the most unearthly yowlings of distress. She must have put up rather an effective defense to judge by the rough exclamations and curses that came from the young lips as they gave the pampered pet a last yank and fled down the alley.
    Miss Spicer exclaimed in horror as the shouts of the boys died away, but Ernestine’s furious, frightened caterwaulings grew louder and more anguished, and there stood her natural defender looking down angrily upon her, silent and helpless. And then Martha Spicer suddenly realized that she must go down herself.
    Then before she could even turn from the window to go downstairs, there suddenly burst from the little side gate of the house next door a long, lanky boy with dark hair, the son of her next-door neighbor, Ronald MacFarland by name. She supposed him to be like all bad boys and therefore come to further torment the poor beast in her distress, and it was quite evident that Ernestine also regarded his approach in the same light, for her howls grew louder and more intense. Martha Spicer suddenly realized that it would be too late to help Ernestine if she waited to reach the front door, so she leaned from the window and addressed the boy, who by this time had reached the cat. But her words were drowned in the noise of the poor animal, and then Martha Spicer stopped in astonishment as she watched the movements of the boy. He threw himself against the cat deftly to prevent her scratching him, and drew out a big knife from his pocket. Opening it with one hand, as he held the cat under his arm with the other, he cut the clothesline with a swift clip and set the cat free.
    “What are you doing to that cat?” burst forth Miss Spicer angrily, unable to grasp the fact that a boy would do a kind act.