Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/265

 Rh to cats. In Watson's Annals we read of Elizabeth Hurd and her husband who came to Philadelphia with Penn's early colonists. They worked hard side by side to build their first rude home, living meantime, like so many of the poorer emigrants, in a cave by the river's bank. One day while Elizabeth was carrying water, and mixing the mortar for their chimney, her husband said to her with some asperity: "Thou hadst better think of dinner!"—an essentially masculine remark, when there was nothing but a little bread and cheese in the larder. Elizabeth walked soberly back to the cave, thinking very hard, but quite unable to translate her thoughts into provisions. On the way she met her cat, holding in his mouth a fine large rabbit, "which she thankfully received, and dressed as an English hare. When her husband came in to dinner,"—plainly expecting to be well fed,—"he was informed of the facts, whereupon they both wept with reverential joy, and ate their meal, which was thus seasonably provided for them, in singleness of heart."

The help afforded in this emergency was never ungratefully forgotten; for when Elizabeth Hurd died, after many years of prosperity, she bequeathed to her grand-niece, Mrs. Deborah Morris, a silver tureen, on which was engraved a cat bearing a rabbit in its mouth.