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Mother Huldah always said that Tommie heard not with his ears but with his whiskers, and perhaps it was true. Tommie himself was making his own plans as he went along.
"Never was bad verse so sweet to me," cried the Princess and she put down a whole bag of gold at Tommie's feet. After her came Lord Mountfalcon himself with that sad grace of his, and all his spirit shadowed with love and grief. "Sir Puss," he said, "shall I wed ever the Princess Yolande?" "Before there are violets in the vales of the kingdom," replied Tommie.
The men in the seine-boat jumped and struck out for the vessel, which was now quite close, with the cook, the only man left aboard, throwing over keelers, draw-buckets, the main sheet anything within his reach that was loose and would support a man. The skipper and Clancy hung on to the last. "Jump you, Tommie!" called the skipper. "Not me till you go," answered Clancy.
Tommie had never used such self-control in all his nine lives, but he sat tight and though his whiskers showed his agitation he never budged. The tanner was mad clear through, and he cried out, "He's a wizard; he ought to be killed" because some people can't see others controlling themselves without thinking there's something wrong with them.
Tommie looked on approvingly. "Yo'll find 'em wear well," he said; "they're the best o' leather and the best o' workmanship." After six months more were gone the baby began to walk, and you might hear a sharp little clatter on the pavement, like the sound of some small iron-shod animal. Tommie heard it one morning just as it was Maggie's usual time to pass, and looked out of his stall.
You could have stopped this thing here to-day, but you didn't. 'No, no, Tommie, she says. 'Yes, yes, I went on, 'and don't try to tell me different. If I didn't know you since you were a little girl you might be able to convince me, but I know you. Maurice, when he was himself, passed you by. You were bound to have him.
Everybody chatted and laughed, and some of the court ladies stroked Tommie's fur with their pretty white hands; and one took off her bracelet and hung it about his neck. But when the Princess Yolande went forward to ask her question, everyone fell back. Then with sweet dignity, as became a princess, she stood before Tommie and said, "Tell me if Lord Mountfalcon love me truly."
The mother sat blinking at them. She delivered reproaches, swallowed potatoes and drank from a yellow-brown bottle. After a time her mood changed and she wept as she carried little Tommie into another room and laid him to sleep with his fists doubled in an old quilt of faded red and green grandeur. Then she came and moaned by the stove.
Nobody listened but Tommie, who was an immense black cat, held in great reverence by the villagers, for he had the greenest eyes and the longest whiskers and the heaviest fur of any cat in the kingdom. Moreover, he had hundreds of mice to his credit and no birds, for he was a good and wise grimalkin.
"He's there! That's lucky!" Helen said, sighting in the open pavilion, the desired Boy Scout, just in the act of sizzling a soda. "And he has on a clean apron, a good sign," said Margaret under her breath. "Listen to catch his name," whispered Cleo, but a call for "Tommie" voided the suggestion.
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