"I always knew you were a coward," she told Miss Kitty. "You"re always ready to attack us small people. But you don"t dare fight anybody of your own size."
"How can I fight a person that I can"t see?" Miss Kitty asked. "If this noisy stranger would come out in the open I"d soon show you whether I"d fight him or not. I"d teach him--if I could get hold of him--not to come here and interfere when I"m making a neighborly call."
"Nonsense!" cried Mrs. Wren. "You don"t mean half you say. If you weren"t a fraud you"d go and find this person that"s jeering at you."
_"Meaow-ow-ow!"_ Again that mocking call grated on Miss Kitty"s ears.
"There!" Mrs. Wren exclaimed. "There it is again. It would make me pretty angry to be talked to like that. But I don"t suppose it bothers you. Probably you"re used to having people caterwaul at you."
That was a little more than Miss Kitty Cat could stand. She scrambled down from the old cherry tree and ran across the yard to the row of currant bushes, whence the last catcalls had come.
As she drew near, a slim slate-colored bird gave a harsh laugh as he flew up from the bushes. It was Mr. Catbird. And Miss Kitty Cat felt sheepish enough when she saw him. She knew that he had succeeded in fooling her with his mocking cries.
The birds--with Mr. Catbird among them, and Mrs. Wren, too--all gathered round Miss Kitty and made such a clamor that she crept away and hid in the haymow. She never could endure much noise, unless she made most of it herself--by the light Of the moon.
XV
MOUSETRAPS
"I DON"T understand," said old dog Spot to Miss Kitty Cat one day, "why Mrs. Green wants to keep you around the house when she can buy mousetraps at the village." Old Spot eyed Miss Kitty slyly. He dearly loved to watch her whiskers bristle and her tail grow big. And he could make both those things happen almost any time he wanted to.
If anybody wished to see Miss Kitty Cat turn up her nose he had only to mention mousetraps. Of all worthless junk she thought they were the worst.
"They can"t catch any but the dull-witted mice," she used to say. "A mouse that knows anything won"t go near a trap unless he"s hungry. If he wants to go to a little trouble to get a piece of stale cheese he can usually spring the trap without getting caught in it--even if he has to use his tail to do it."
"But a mousetrap," Spot objected, "is little or no care. One doesn"t have to feed it except when he wants it to catch a mouse. And everybody knows that Mrs. Green feeds you several times a day. Besides, the fewer mice you catch, the more food she has to waste on you."
"Rubbish!" Miss Kitty Cat sniffed. "You eat ten times as much as I do.
And I never heard of your catching a mouse, either."
"Ah!" said Spot. "Don"t forget that I drive the cows and watch the house and the barns at night. And during my spare moments I hunt woodchucks.
You couldn"t expect a person of my importance to fritter away his valuable time catching mice. Mousetraps couldn"t do my work," old dog Spot continued. "There never was a mousetrap made that could drive a cow."
"That"s one reason why I don"t like them," said Miss Kitty Cat. "They"re not only poor at catching mice, but they"re useless at anything else.
Now, whenever I capture a mouse I always make matters as pleasant as possible for, him. I always play with him for as long a time as I can spare. But a trap just goes _snap_! A trap doesn"t seem to _want_ to make friends with anybody."
Old dog Spot laughed right in Miss Kitty"s face.
"Much you care for your friends the mice!" he chuckled. "And much they care for you! If you knew what they call you, you"d be pretty angry."
"What"s that?" Miss Kitty demanded.
"I don"t want to tell you," said Spot. "I don"t want to hurt your feelings." He knew (the rogue) that he could tease Miss Kitty more by leaving her to wonder what name the mice had for her.
Much as she wanted to know it, Miss Kitty Cat was too proud and haughty to ask him again. And, jumping up suddenly, she walked stiffly away.
"I shall have to find a mouse somewhere," she muttered under her breath.
"I shall have to find a mouse somewhere and make him tell me what old Spot won"t."
XVI
A MIDNIGHT MEAL
DOWN in the cellar of the farmhouse a fat couple known as Mr. and Mrs.
Moses Mouse crept out of a hole under the pantry floor and ran down a post to the cellar bottom.
"Things have come to a pretty pa.s.s!" Mr. Mouse grumbled. "Mrs. Green never did leave more than a crumb or two in the pantry where a fellow could get it. And since Miss Snooper came to live here there"s less to eat than ever."
Mrs. Mouse nodded her head somewhat dolefully.
"Do you remember, Moses," she said to her husband, "what delicious bits of stale cheese Mrs. Green used to serve for us here in the cellar, stuck on a short piece of wire? To be sure, she was somewhat thoughtless--the way she left that dangerous loop caught back, so it would snap over and catch you behind the ears if you weren"t careful.
But you were always very skillful at avoiding that."
"Ah! Those were happy days--or, I should say, _nights_!" Mr. Mouse exclaimed with a sigh. "It makes me sad just to think of that fine, old, stale, moldy cheese."
"I suppose Mrs. Green gives it all to that horrid Miss Snooper now,"
said Mrs. Mouse, as she climbed to a shelf and looked at the labels on several jars of jam and jelly that stood there in a row.
Moses Mouse watched her hopefully. Being quite plump, he was a bit lazy. And he did not care to scramble up to a shelf for nothing.
"There isn"t one without a cover, is there?" he inquired.
"No!" his wife replied.
"There isn"t one with a little sweetness oozing down the side of it, is there?" he asked her.
"No!" said Mrs. Mouse. "Not one! I suppose Miss Snooper has licked them all clean."
"That disagreeable Miss Snooper has spoiled everything for us," Moses Mouse declared. And for a fat gentleman he looked oddly unhappy.
"I don"t know what we"ll do for our supper," he whined. He always whined when he was hungry.
"There"s that chunk of putty that Farmer Green left in the woodshed,"
his wife reminded him.
"Ugh!" Moses Mouse made a wry face. "We"ve dined upon that for the last three nights. And I never did like putty, anyhow. I wish that snooping Miss Snooper had to eat it." His mournful eyes roved about the cellar until they rested on something in a dark corner. "What"s in that box over there?" he asked Mrs. Mouse.
"I don"t know," she answered.
"Well--go and see, then!" he snapped. "I"m so faint I can scarcely stand."