CHAPTER XII

WEDDING-BELLS AND BRIEF FAREWELLS

There’s nothing harder than deciding on how to have a good time when one deliberately sets out to have one. A good time seems to be a fine sort of thief, which must come upon one unawares and steal away heaviness of heart.

Having made up their minds to giving back Ban-Ban and Kiku-san to Rob and Lois, except for the weekly visit to Purrington which all four had pledged themselves to make, and having resolved on having the very best kind of time until the close of that day when their guests and the beloved cats started for their first home, the Purrers did not know how to begin having it. They were in danger of standing around discussing what to do instead of pitching into the good time without delay, just as children sometimes do, when something happened.

Down the road that led to Purrington two dots were seen moving nearer. When they had come decidedly nearer the two dots turned into two cats hurrying along. One was snowy white, as the sunshine revealed, and the other was a Maltese.

“Here come your doubles, Ban and Kiku!” cried Bidelia.

The Purrers were quite used by this time to the arrival of strangers coming out from the human city to seek the peace and safety of Purrington, but this pair looked very different from most of the arrivals. The refugees who joined the Purrers were more than likely to come with “lean and hungry look,” like Cassius. Indeed Tommy Traddles, who had often sat on a big volume of Shakespeare during his youth, and who thus had learned to know the poet well, named one of these strangers Cassius for that reason. But this pair of cats arriving now were glossy, sleek, plump, and most elegant to behold, and the Purrers wondered at them as they waved their paws, making them welcome and signalling them to enter the gates of the city.

The Maltese cat came up to the Purrers with a jaunty air. He was strikingly like Ban-Ban, with the same short, Maltese-kind of nose and the same up-and-coming air which the Founder wore, but the Purrers and Lois and Rob thought he was not quite as beautiful in figure.

The white cat accompanying him hung back shyly. She had a less delicate face, more chubby than Kiku-san’s, but she had his gentle air.

“Gentlemen, your servant,” said the Maltese cat, bowing to the Purrers with an impressive air, and expressing himself in a manner which at once betrayed the fact that he had lived with a family where English classics were read aloud. “My name is Ods Bobs, gentlemen; it is a name as old as the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This lady is called Lady Blanche. We lived in the same house in town; one of us had been brought up by one old maiden sister, the other by the other. Lady Blanche and I were looking forward to being married and living happily ever after, looking forward to spending our lives together to their end, just as we had spent them together thus far from kittenhood, when—imagine our horror!—I learned that the person who had brought me up intended sending me away to her brother’s little girl, while Lady Blanche stayed on with her protector! It was not possible to submit to such a fate! We made up our minds to run away; of course to run away together. And where were we so likely to run as to Purrington, of which we had heard such glowing accounts from other cats? So we came; here we are! Will you receive us among you?”

“Gladly,” cried all the Purrers.

“Isn’t that the very strangest thing, that another Maltese cat and this little white lady should come here just when we are taking away Ban-Ban and Kiku-san?” whispered Lois to Rob. “It looks as if they had come to take their places,” she added, as Rob nodded his assent to her question.

“Then we will gladly stay,” Ods Bobs went on. “But one thing more. We were to have had a pretty wedding on the day after to-morrow—no end of guests were invited. We can get on without the guests and the prettiness, but we should like a wedding, and to set up housekeeping for ourselves at once. Can we be married here?”

The Purrers looked at one another, puzzled. There had been no demand for such a thing before, and they were at a loss how to answer. Then they looked at Rob for a suggestion.

“I think the mayor can marry them,” Rob began, slowly, but was interrupted by Bidelia’s little excited mew as she ran over to throw her paws around Lady Blanche’s neck, who was blushing till the tip of her pink nose was rosy red.

“The mayor!” cried Bidelia. “Tommy Traddles—the very thing! We’ll give you the loveliest wedding, my dear! Come, Laura! Come, all lady Purrers, and the kittens! We must gather quantities of catnip and make garlands for the hall. And order all the ribbon there is at the shop. Won’t you come with us, Lady Blanche; we shall want to ask you something every five minutes. Why, you’re not much older than my girls!”

“I’m nine months old,” said Lady Blanche, through her blushes.

“Puttel and Dolly Varden are six months old—I’m only eighteen months old myself. We’ll have a lovely wedding! I wish my husband was here, but he won’t come for a month. He went to the country with the family he owns very early this year, and hasn’t got back. Come along, my dears,” said Bidelia, hurrying away.

The Purrers had never seen Bidelia so excited, and the gentlemen of the place looked at one another, feeling very useless indeed, as the ladies ran off, attended by all the kittens.

“I think we ought to offer to help them,” said Lois. “Rob, Ban-Ban, Kiku-san dearie, let us go after them and ask Bidelia if we can’t help trim the hall.”

It seemed queer to ask such a small cat as Bidelia if she couldn’t make use of them in some way, but the children were getting used to queer things, and to taking the lower place with cats, as mere mortals should.

Bidelia said if they would wait until the kittens came back with the catnip, which they had gone to gather in the Public Gardens, she would be willing to let them help twist the garlands and hang them around the hall. Bidelia took the lead in these arrangements, as she was most fitted to do, by reason of her youth and taste, as well as her experience.

“How often we shall talk over these wonderful happenings in Purrington after we get home, you and I, and our two Blessings,” observed Lois, as they waited for the catnip.

“We shall not talk to you—or rather you won’t understand us—between our visits to Purrington,” Ban-Ban reminded her. “You understand us a little when you’re at home—you often can tell what we want—but we can’t talk together like this outside of Pussy-Cat Town.”

“I’ve been trying to think of everything I want to say to you before we leave here to-night,” Kiku-san added.

“Oh, how horrid!” cried Lois, who had forgotten this rule, and had been looking forward to long talks with Kiku after they were tucked away for the night.

“It will only make us enjoy our visits to Purrington the more,” said Rob, wisely. And then the kittens came bringing the catnip, and they all fell to work weaving the slender leaves and blossoms into wreaths and garlands.

In a short time the hall was beautifully hung with green, and the odour that filled it would have made one of those calico cats, stuffed with batting, turn a somersault. When the hall was trimmed Bidelia, never stopping to admire her own handiwork, ran off with her kittens at her heels to make her own toilet and her children’s, and to summon the wedding guests.

Not a Purrer was lacking to the “large and fashionable gathering which filled the hall,” as _The Weekly Mews_, Purrington’s paper, stated when it appeared on the following Saturday.

’Clipsy played beautifully on his fiddle as the bridal procession approached. Rob remembered having once seen a picture of a Puritan wedding, in which the bride was represented as riding on a splendid snow-white bull. So the Purrers, acting on this hint, had got Brindle to allow Lady Blanche to ride to her wedding on Brindle’s back, and the effect of the very small snow-white bride clinging to big Brindle’s ridge-poled back was most impressive. The groom walked at the cow’s side, strutting along as proud as a cat, a duke, and a peacock, all rolled into one—and well he might be, for the Lady Blanche was lovely.

Tommy Traddles stood on the platform waiting the bridal procession. It entered the hall, preceded by Puttel and Dolly Varden, in immense white bows, as bridesmaids, and following them came Nugget, also in a white bow bigger, far, than his head, scattering catnip blossoms before the happy couple’s softly falling, padded feet.

It was a most beautiful sight, and a deep purr rolled around the hall as the Purrers gazed admiringly at this first wedding in Purrington.

Rob had drawn up the marriage service, which was brief and simple.

“Do you promise, Ods Bobs,” Doctor Traddles asked, “to keep this cat provided with mice all her life? To protect her from dampness, crossness, and all other things she wouldn’t like, just as far as you can? And to love her until she is white, not with this beautiful young whiteness she has now, but with the whiteness of old age?”

“I promise,” said Ods Bobs, in a deep voice.

“And do you, Lady Blanche, promise to nurse and lick this cat if he gets ill, to keep his house, and cook his mice and his catnip as he likes them, and to love him always, and not to spit at him, or scratch him ever, but be a good wife until you die?”

“I promise,” mewed Lady Blanche so faintly that Tommy Traddles had to bend down to hear whether she said: “I promise,” or “I prefer mice.”

But as her response was the right one, Tommy Traddles straightened himself and said, turning to the audience: “I now marry these cats! Lady Blanche, give Ods Bobs your paw to hold; Ods Bobs, take Lady Blanche’s hand. You are now cat and cat, cat and wife. Keep your promises and be happy for life.”

The Purrers purred together the gay tune into which ’Clipsy’s fiddle at once broke, and the procession left the hall as it had entered it, only in retiring Nugget did not walk backward, nor behind his sisters, but strutted out ahead of the bride and groom, and of the bridesmaids, as proud as Ods Bobs himself.

“I’m afraid we ought to start for home,” said Rob, regretfully, as the Purrers prepared to escort the bridal party to the newest house in town, which, fortunately, had not been rented, and so was ready for their use.

“And take Ban-Ban and Kiku-san?” cried a Purrer. All the cats suddenly remembered their sorrow, which the events of the past few hours had made them almost forget.

“Isn’t it strange—and nice—that Ods Bobs and Lady Blanche have come on the very day we go, and that they are white and Maltese, like Bannie and Kiku?” hinted Lois, comfortingly.

“There are no friends like old friends; there can be but one Ban-Ban and Kiku-san,” mewed the cats in chorus.

“So there can’t,” agreed Rob, heartily. “But we’re going to bring this one Ban and Kiku every week to see you. Don’t you think we ought to have just one cat, when we love all cats so much? And don’t you think it ought to be this one, one for each of us, that we took care of and loved from the time they were kittens?”

“Oh, it’s all right, Rob, it’s all right,” cried the cats, eagerly, afraid Rob was offended. “We owe you even our best Purrer and our Founder—but we are sorry enough to let them go.”

“Say good-bye, friends,” cried Ban-Ban, brightly. “Ods Bobs, you’ll have to try to look still more like me, so they won’t miss me! Good-bye, Wutz-Butz; keep the town safe! Good-bye, ’Clipsy, you fine fellow! Good-bye, Tommy Traddles, and good luck to your mayoring! Good-bye, kind Madam Laura, and good-bye, clever, charming Bidelia! Good-bye, three kittens, Puttel, Dolly, Nugget—keep your mittens; remember you are _three_ little kittens! And we shall never be gone long. Good-bye.”

Kiku-san silently took each paw in turn as it was proffered by the Purrers. He was much moved, but did not for a moment lose sight of the fact that where Lois was he must be. The children kissed every cat in the city between the ears, and renewed their promises to protect Purrington.

Then the party of four passed out of the city gates.

“I hope you will never be sorry, Ban,” said Rob. Ban-Ban looked up in his face.

“Mew,” he said, and Rob remembered that, until their return, this was all that Ban-Ban and Kiku-san would say to Lois and him.

Looking back, the children and their cats saw gathered on the walls of the city all the Purrers, just as they had seen them when they arrived. Again they were singing, and though as Rob and Lois walked down the road they could no longer understand the words of the song, Ban-Ban and Kiku-san understood them, and they were these, sung to the air of “My Lady Lou:”

“We watch two shadows wav’ring down the roadway— Our Bannie-Ban and Kiku-san; How heavy on our homeless hearts their load lay When they showed us where the home road ran! We could not look upon our dear ones going, Our eyes would burn, our hearts would yearn, But that we’re comforted in knowing We shall watch when they return.

_Chorus_;

“Good-bye, Ban, we’re lending you; Good-bye, dear Kiku-san, we’re sending you But for a little space, then turn your gentle face Toward Pussy-Town, where love awaits. Here we’ll live in joy and peace, But you will bring us joy’s increase, And when these children come, they’ll hear our loud purrs hum Through Purrington’s wide open gates.”

Transcriber’s note:

○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.

○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.

○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.