" Then, remembering her manners, she
added: "We'd be awful glad if you'd have dinner with us, Mr.
Winslow."
Jed shook his head.
"Much obliged," he drawled, "but if I didn't eat that mackerel, who
would?"
The question was answered promptly. While Mr. Winslow and his
small caller were chatting concerning the former's dinner, another
eager personality was taking a marked interest in a portion of that
dinner. Cherub, the Taylor cat, abroad on a foraging expedition,
had scented from his perch upon a nearby fence a delicious and
appetizing odor. Following his nose, literally, Cherub descended
from the fence and advanced, sniffing as he came. The odor was
fish, fresh fish. Cherub's green eyes blazed, his advance became
crafty, strategical, determined. He crept to the Winslow back
step, he looked up through the open door, he saw the mackerel upon
its plate on the top of the ice-chest.
"If I didn't eat that mackerel," drawled Jed, "who would?"
There was a swoop through the air, a scream from Barbara, a crash--
two crashes, a momentary glimpse of a brindle cat with a mackerel
crosswise in its mouth and the ends dragging on the ground, a
rattle of claws on the fence. Then Jed and his visitor were left
to gaze upon a broken plate on the floor, an overturned bowl on top
of the ice-chest, and a lumpy rivulet of rice pudding trickling to
the floor.
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