Page:Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920).djvu/35

Rh the subject, I asked him what Miss Shirley was like.

“Very sweet girl,” said Max. “You know I always admired those gray-eyed girls with that splendid Titian hair.”

I am dark, with brown eyes. Just then I detested Max. I got up and said I was going to get some milk for Fatima.

I found Ismay in a rage in the kitchen. She had been up in the garret, and a mouse had run across her foot. Mice always get on Ismay’s nerves.

“We need a cat badly enough,” she fumed, “but not a useless, pampered thing, like Fatima. That garret is literally swarming with mice. You'll not catch me going up there again.”

Fatima did not prove such a nuisance as we had feared. Huldah Jane liked her, and Ismay, in spite of her declaration that she would have nothing to do with her, looked after her comfort scrupulously. She even used to get up in the middle of the night and go out to see if Fatima was warm. Max came in every day and, being around, gave us good advice.

Then one day, about three weeks after Aunt Cynthia’s departure, Fatima disappeared — just simply disappeared as if she had been dissolved into thin air. We left her one afternoon, curled up asleep in her basket by the fire, under Huldah Jane’s eye, while