From that time on Juno had been the friend and playmate of the younger generation.  She never seemed like an animal to any of us.  Many a time I have heard Ned apologize for having unintentionally hurt Juno, with the exclamation: 

“Oh, excuse me, Juno, I didn’t mean to do that!”

After which Juno always purred softly, and showed that she had forgiven him.

But the one thing that specially distinguished Juno from all the other cats that I ever knew, was her big-hearted motherhood.  If Juno had been a woman, how many desolate orphans she would have cared for!  She would have given them summer outings, no doubt, and would have filled their stockings brimful at Christmas time.

Not being a woman, Juno did her best, nevertheless, to make the world a little easier for all the orphans she knew.  What a heart must have beaten under that gray fur!  Ned and I often talked of it, and were filled with regret that Juno could not understand our language so that we could talk to her and get her views on the subject.

There was the time when she adopted the chicken, for instance.  We knew Juno so well that we felt perfectly certain how she looked at those things, and so when the old yellow hen declined to acknowledge the little black chicken as hers, and pecked its head whenever it went near her, we took the helpless and disowned orphan and put it in Juno’s bed, between the two kittens.

“There, Juno,” said Ned, by way of explanation to her look of astonishment, “there’s a child that’s been deserted by its unfeeling mother; I wish you’d look after it.”

And Juno took the chicken and held it with one paw while she licked it all over, though I am not sure that she liked the taste of the soft down that covered the little stranger.  She kept the chicken all that night and every night afterwards until it considered itself big enough to go alone.

How we used to laugh to see Juno walking about the yard with her foster-child chirping after her, or to see the chicken run to her and insist on being hovered!

[Illustration]

As time passed the adopted child became independent and needed no further guardianship, yet the friendliest relations existed between the two.  Even after the chicken was grown and had chickens of her own they seldom met in their promenades about the place that Juno did not pause to rub her head affectionately against the neck of the orphan that she had brought up.

* * * * *

Juno was about a year older, I think, when there was a death in her family.  The one little kitten that she loved with all her mother heart died and left her desolate.  It was a very sad occasion, I remember, but we had a great funeral.  We dug the grave at the end of the garden.  Johnny’s express wagon was the hearse, and Johnny drew it, and was very serious indeed.  We borrowed Mrs. Martin’s baby carriage, and that was the mourning coach.  Juno rode in it, with Ned and Gimps walking one on each side and holding her in.  I pushed the coach, while a long procession of the neighbors’ children came behind, crying with all their might.  We sung a hymn at the grave, and did everything we could to soothe Juno’s grief.