Janice Day, Young Homemaker | Page 6

Otherwise, the trouble was bound to increase and become--what? Even Janice's imagination, trained, as it was, by the succession of incompetent and unwilling kitchen helpers, could not picture that.
Before Janice Day could reach the hall, Olga was padding down the stairs to the kitchen. From the rear arose increasing howls. The cats may have mysteriously gathered in apparent amity; but so many of them shut up in that outer kitchen with no escape could not possibly dwell for long in harmony.
There certainly was no harmony in these mounting wails. The principle motif seemed to be furnished by the cat that had first voiced his complaint. But now, as Janice plunged down the stairs after Olga, the thin, high scream of the initial feline chorister was crossed, in warp and woof, by basset strains.
The sounds rose and fell, as though proceeding from cats in torment--an agonizing oratorio like nothing Janice had ever heard before. She screamed to the Swedish girl, but her voice was drowned by the caterwauling in the back kitchen. Olga wrenched open the door. Janice, arriving to look over her shoulder at the very moment she did so, saw the back kitchen practically filled with cats.
When one cat loses its temper it seems as though every other cat within hearing gets excited. In the corners, out of the way of the battlefield, kittens and tabbies were rolling and playing upon the dried twigs and leaves that Janice knew must be catnip that Arlo Junior had flung upon the floor to bait the cats into the kitchen. But the cats in the middle of the room were preparing for the representation of a busy day at Donnebrook Fair.
"Them cats! In de clean kitchen what I scrubbed last night only I bane kill them cats!" And there was not a cat in the lot as mad as Olga Cedarstrom.
There was a hod of coal beside her. Olga seized the good-sized lumps of stove coal, one after another, and began volleying with a strong overhand throw at the excited animals.
Olga proved to be an excellent shot. She hit a cat with almost every lump of coal she threw. But she could not, after all, have easily failed to do this, there were so many cats in the kitchen.
"Oh, don't! Don't, Olga! Stop!" shrieked Janice. "You will hurt them"
"Hurt them?" repeated the girl. "I bane mean to hurt dem" and, slam! went another lump of coal.
"But they can't get out!" gasped Janice.
"Den how dey get in, huh?" demanded Olga, and threw another lump with terrific force.
There was a howl, higher and more blood-curdling than any that had heretofore assailed their ears. One big cat scrambled up the wall, and up the window panes, seeking an exit. One of the creature's legs dragged limply.
"Olga Cedarstrom!" shrieked Janice, "you have broken that poor cat's leg."
"I bane break all his legs!" rejoined this quite ferocious girl. "How dese cats coom here? I bane sure you know!"
She turned to glare at Janice Day so savagely, a lump of coal poised in her smutted hand, that the girl was really frightened. She backed away from the angry woman.
Then she thought of something she might do to save the cats and the back kitchen from complete wreck. Janice darted out of the room to the porch. In a moment she had unlatched the summer-kitchen door and flung it wide open.
Instantly there boiled out of the room cats big and cats little, cats of all colors and every degree of fright. One of the last to escape was the poor cat with the broken leg. There was nothing Janice Day could do for it. She did not dare to try to touch it.
She ventured back into the house to find Olga Cedarstrom still breathing out threatenings and slaughter. Olga was in her nightgown and a wrapper. She had not even stopped for slippers when she came from her bed. Now she padded to the back stairs, turning to shake her clenched fist at Janice and cry:
"I leave! I leave! I bane going to pack my troonk. The man pay me oop to last night, and I leave!"
"I am glad of it!" gasped Janice, finding her voice again. "It wasn't my fault, and it wasn't the poor cats' fault. I am glad you are going, so there!"
But she became more serious as she prepared the nice breakfast she had promised herself the night before her father should have. She heard Olga go to the telephone in the hall. She called a number and then talked in Swedish for several minutes to whoever answered.
Janice's father came into the dining room just as his little daughter brought in the breakfast. When he saw the steaming coffee pot and the covered dishes and toast-rack his face brightened. But he had to be told