Spice Box by Grace Livingston Hill Read Free Book Online Page B

closed and locked the kitchen door with a reassuring click and set about preparing their supper. Nice, appetizing milk toast and poached eggs—a whole egg for Ernestine. The smell of the browning toast presently tempted the cat, and her mistress was able to draw her forth from her hiding place and remove the fragment of rope still attached to her tail. The cat seemed grateful for this and set up a broken rumbling in her chest intended to indicate gratitude. The lady suddenly realized that it was pleasant to have even a cat grateful and friendly to her.
    Perhaps under the circumstances Aunt Abigail might have given Ernestine a seat at the table with a high chair and a bib, but her niece would never go so far as that. She did, however, find real comfort in setting Ernestine’s saucer of toast and egg quite near to her side as she ate her own supper.
    Of her own free will she stooped and patted the cat when they were done, and perhaps the wise animal drew as much comfort from the touch as she might have done from more elaborate pity.
    After the supper things were washed and put away, Martha turned on the light and sat down with her paper once more. Ernestine tucked close to her skirts unreproved, rumbling away her content. Somehow Martha felt shaken from her beaten path and seemed to have a sweeter, more wholesome view of the world. A boy, a simple unregenerate boy, had gone out of his way to be kind to a dumb animal, and had incidentally smiled at her, and the whole universe seemed changed.
    She read her paper conscientiously through, reading over again the article about how to help boys, and this time it did not seem to anger her so much. A kindly freckled face seemed to be smiling at her between the lines and saying in a fascinating drawl, “
They’re only kids. They’ll get some sense bimeby
,” and the good-natured appeal in his eyes seemed to warm her heart and cool her anger toward boys in general. When she finally turned out the lights for the night, she allowed Ernestine to go upstairs with her. Every night so far the cat had attempted it but had been firmly put back in the kitchen on a cushion in a soapbox. Tonight, however, she looked down hesitatingly as the great creature purred wistfully about her feet, and then said, “Well, come on, I suppose you’re used to it!” And when Ernestine happily jumped on the foot of the bed and curled in a furry mound close to the footboard, Martha did not shove her off, and she absently smiled and patted her as she passed to turn out the light. She was thinking of a freckled, blue-eyed face turned up to the window, and a pleasant, saucy voice saying, “
Ma’am
?”
    During the hours that she lay awake that night thinking new thoughts, she was dimly conscious of the purring of the cat and strangely comforted by it. Why hadn’t she known before how lonely it was in the world without even a cat? Why, even a cat was company.
    Bits of sentences from that article about boys floated through her mind now and then, and stayed with her in the morning when she awoke. She tried to forget them, but they would return at the most unexpected moments and confuse her thoughts. She half resented and half courted the suggestions that article seemed to bring to her.
    Monday and Tuesday she got through quite contentedly by going from room to room and burning up or otherwise discarding a few more ancient landmarks in the house. It had to be done one item at a time, for as yet her conscience was tender with regard to Aunt Abigail’s treasured household furnishings. But after
Wide Awake
and
Fast Asleep
had been used for kindling fire in the old-fashioned coal stove, and several doilies and antimacassars had followed suit, she felt better, and a spirit of revolution entered into her. If the house was hers, why shouldn’t she have it to please her?
    Wednesday morning she swept the parlor mantel free from several cheap imitation Dresden shepherdesses and a purple vase decorated with hideous green