abeth told her they did not want any more cats at New Moon.
“Oh, please let me keep it, Aunt Elizabeth,” Emily begged. “It won’t be a bit of bother to you. I have had experience in bringing up cats. And I’m so lonesome for a kitten. Saucy Sal is getting so wild running with the barn cats that I can’t ’sociate with her like I used to do—and she never was nice to cuddle. Please, Aunt Elizabeth.”
Aunt Elizabeth would not and did not please. She was in a very bad humour that day, anyhow,—nobody knew just why. In such a mood she was entirely unreasonable. She would not listen to anybody—Laura and Cousin Jimmy had to hold their tongues, and Cousin Jimmy was bidden to take the grey kitten down to the Blair Water and drown it. Emily burst into tears over this cruel command, and this aggravated Aunt Elizabeth still further. She was so cross that Cousin Jimmy dared not smuggle the kitten up to the barn as he had at first planned to do.
“Take that beast down to the pond and throw it in and come back and tell me you’ve done it,” said Elizabeth angrily. “I mean to be obeyed—New Moon is not going to be made a dumping-ground for Old Jock Kelly’s superfluous cats.”
Cousin Jimmy did as he was told and Emily would not eat any dinner. After dinner she stole mournfully away through the old orchard down the pasture to the pond. Just why she went she could not have told, but she felt that go she must. When she reached the bank of the little creek where Lofty John’s brook ran into Blair Water, she heard piteous shrieks; and there, marooned on a tiny islet of sere marsh grass in the creek, was an unhappy little beast, its soaking fur plastered against its sides, shivering and trembling in the wind of the sharp autumnal day. The old oat-bag in which Cousin Jimmy had imprisoned it was floating out into the pond.
