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Billy gazed at the cat with reproachful eyes. "And you, too, Spunkie," she murmured. Then she got to her feet and went back to her chair. This time she picked up a magazine and began to turn the leaves very fast, one after another. Half-past nine came, then ten. Pete appeared at the door to get Spunkie, and to see that everything was all right for the night. "Mr.
Even Spunkie, grown now to be sleek, lazy, and majestically indifferent, was in holiday attire, for a brand-new pink bow of huge dimensions adorned his fat neck for the first time in many months. "You see," William had explained to Bertram, "I put on that ribbon again because I thought it would make Spunkie seem more homelike, and more like Spunk.
"By the way, it has just occurred to me as I write that perhaps, after all, you won't have to go quite away. There are plenty of good schools for young ladies right in and near Boston, which I am sure you could attend, and still live at home. Suppose you come back then as soon as you can, and we'll talk it up. And that reminds me, I wonder how Spunk will get along with Spunkie.
Neither, on his part, was Bertram loath to be appropriated. Like two lovers they read and walked and talked together, and like two children, sometimes, they romped through the stately old rooms with Spunkie, or with Tommy Dunn, who was a frequent guest.
On the first floor Bertram's old rooms and the drawing-room came in for their share of the general overhauling. Even Spunkie did not escape, but had to submit to the ignominy of a bath. And then dawned fair and clear the first day of September, bringing at five o'clock the bride and groom.
The only man interested in business, who walked in a steady manner at his old pace, though he sometimes was seen, being of a spunkie temper, grinding the teeth of vexation, was Mr Cayenne himself. One day, however, he came to me at the manse. "Doctor," says he, for so he always called me, "I want your advice.
With that Tobit Balmutto ordered the lad who brought my grandfather to the house to saddle a horse that he called Spunkie; and in a trice he was mounted and on the road after Sir David, whom he overtook notwithstanding the spirit of his mare, Skelp-the-dub, before he had cleared the town of Pathhead, and they travelled onward at a brisk trot together, the knight waxing more and more pleased with his companion, in so much that by the time they had reached Cupar, where they stopped to corn, he lamented that a young man of his parts should think of following the slavery of a ferrier's life, when he might rise to trusts and fortune in the house of some of the great men of the time, kindly offering to procure for him, on their arrival at St Andrews, the favour and patronage of his kinsman, the Archbishop.
"Well, I know what Will is doing," he declared. "Will is in Bertram's den dozing before the fireplace with Spunkie curled up in his lap." As it happened, both these surmises were not far from right. In the Strata, the Henshaws' old Beacon Street home, William was sitting before the fireplace with the cat in his lap, but he was not dozing. He was talking.
There remained now, indeed, only Spunkie, the small gray cat, to remind any one of the days that were gone though, to be sure, there were Billy's letters, if they might be called a reminder. Billy did not write often. She said that she was "too busy to breathe." Such letters as did come from her were addressed to William, though they soon came to be claimed by the entire family.
But Spunkie would not wake up, and Spunkie would not play. She pretended to. She bit at the reins, and sank her sharp claws into the dangling balls. For a fleeting instant, even, something like mischief gleamed in her big yellow eyes. Then the jaws relaxed, the paws turned to velvet, and Spunkie's sleek gray head settled slowly back into lazy comfort. Spunkie was asleep.
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