as for eatin’—­ Well, every time I cooked meat or fish they sat down in a circle and whooped for some.  When I took it off the fire and put it in a plate on the table, I had to put another plate and a—­a plane or somethin’ heavy on top of it or they’d have had it sartin sure.  Then when I sat down to eat it they formed a circle again like a reg’lar band and tuned up and hollered.  Lord a-mercy, how they did holler!  And if one of the kittens stopped, run out of wind or got a sore throat or anything, the old cat would bite it to set it goin’ again.  She wan’t goin’ to have any shirkin’ in her orchestra.  I ate to music, as you might say, same as I’ve read they do up to Boston restaurants.  And about everything I did eat was stuffed with cats’ hairs.  Seemed sometimes as if those kittens was solid fur all the way through; they never could have shed all that hair from the outside.  Somebody told me that kittens never shed hair, ’twas only full grown cats did that.  I don’t believe it.  Nate Rogers’ old maltee never shed all that alone; allowin’ her a half barrel, there was all of another barrel spread around the premises.  No-o, those cats was a good deal of a nuisance.  Um-hm. . . .  Yes, they was. . . .”

He paused and, apparently having forgotten that he was in the middle of a story, began to whistle lugubriously and to bend all his other energies to painting.  Miss Hunniwell, who had laughed until her eyes were misty, wiped them with her handkerchief and commanded him to go on.

“Tell me the rest of it,” she insisted.  “How did you get rid of them?  How did Mr. Rogers come to take them back?”

“Eh? . . .  Oh, why, you see, I went over to Nate’s three or four times and told him his cat and kittens were here and I didn’t feel right to deprive him of ’em any longer.  He said never mind, I could keep ’em long as I wanted to.  I said that was about as long as I had kept ’em.  Then he said he didn’t know’s he cared about ever havin’ ’em again; said he and his wife had kind of lost their taste for cats, seemed so.  I—­well, I hinted that, long as the tribe was at my house I wan’t likely to have a chance to taste much of anything, but it didn’t seem to have much effect.  Then—­”

“Yes, yes; go on! go on!”

“Oh. . . .  Then one day Nate he happened to be in here—­come to borrow somethin’, some tool seems to me ’twas—­and the cats was climbin’ round promiscuous same as usual.  And one of the summer women came in while he was here, wanted a mill for her little niece or somethin’.  And she saw one of the animals and she dropped everything else and sang out:  ’Oh, what a beautiful kitten!  What unusual coloring!  May I see it?’ Course she was seein’ it already, but I judged she meant could she handle it, so I tried to haul the critter loose from my leg—­there was generally one or more of ’em shinnin’ over me somewhere.  It squalled when I took hold of it and she says:  ’Oh, it doesn’t want to come, does it!  It must have a very affectionate disposition to be so attached to you.’  Seemed to me ’twas attached by its claws more’n its disposition, but I pried it loose and handed it to her.  Then she says again, ‘What unusual colorin’!  Will you sell this one to me?  I’ll give you five dollars for it.’”