Little Sister Snow | Page 3

cruel, cruel beast!" In vain the cat struggled. Yuki Chan held it firmly at arm's-length while she decided what was to be its fate.
Looking sternly at the offender, her lips rounded into a long-drawn "s-o," the light of anticipated revenge danced in her eyes. At last she knew what to do, O most honorable but very ugly cat! She would throw her into the ditch, where great crawling frogs with popping eyes would stick out long tongues; where flying things would sting, and creeping things would bite; where the great tide would come later and take her out to the big, big ocean, where there was neither milk to drink nor birds to eat.
At the thought of her furry playmate floating alone and hungry in the vast place which, to Yuki Chan, had neither beginning nor end, something of pity touched her heart, and she slightly loosened her grasp.
The cat gained a good breath and used it. In the fight for freedom a sharp claw was drawn down the child's arm, leaving a line of red in its course. Compassion took flight, and Yuki Chan, clutching anew, went swiftly down the path that led to the street, with a watchful eye on the lodge of the keeper of the gate.
The keeper was very old, and very cross, and lately had acquired a curious idea that little girls must ask his honorable permission to go in and out the gate. One day he actually threatened punishment, and Yuki Chan, in her scorn, invited him to cut off his head with a sword, that he might save his face. Now the way was clear.
She turned her head and bumped her small body against the weight of the heavy gates until they swung slightly apart and permitted her to slip through.
So intent was her purpose to reach the ditch across the street that she did not see an approaching jinrikisha, and before she knew it she had been tumbled over and sent rolling to the side of the road. Still clutching the kitten, she sat up and rubbed the dust from her eyes.
Standing over her was the jinrikisha man, and beside him was his passenger, a young American boy, whose light hair and blue eyes held her spell-bound. He was brushing the dust from her kimono, and his foreign tongue made strange sounds.
"Say, kid," the boy was saying, as he transferred the dust from his hands to his handkerchief, "glad you're not hurt or got any bones cracked. Where's your mama, or your papa, or your nurse, to give you a spanking and keep you off the street?"
As he talked Yuki Chan grew fascinated watching his mouth, and forgot, for a moment, her direful intention. The cat, again taking advantage of her relaxed hold, began to tug for freedom, and a lively struggle ensued.
The boy, looking on, began to laugh, a laugh that began in his eyes, ran over his face and down into his throat, whence it came again in a shout of boyish merriment.
Yuki Chan, looking from him to the smiling jinrikisha man, grew crimson with anger. With a swift movement she ran toward the ditch.
Divining her purpose by the look in her eyes, Dick Merrit went gallantly to the rescue of the kitten. He was tall for his sixteen years, and his long strides more than matched the pattering steps of the slip of a girl who raced before him.
"No, you don't, kiddie," he cried; "your manicured cat is not going into the ditch, if we have to scrap for it."
Merrit caught Yuki Chan in one arm, and again and again loosened her fingers from the struggling kitten.
"Iya, Iya!" the child screamed; but Merrit, as determined as she, held her firmly, and ended by lightly slapping first one little hand and then the other.
The child, thus coming into contact for the first time with physical force, relaxed her grasp and gazed in amazement at the boy's determined face.
"I guess your 'Iya' means no, little lady, and I say 'Iya' too," said Merrit, taking the cat into his arms and smoothing its uneven back. "You are not going to put it into the ditch. Why don't you give it to me? I am getting up a collection of cats and things at the school, and I'd like to take this queer specimen along. Ask her if I can have it."
The jinrikisha man, who stood a smiling spectator, saw Dick Merrit's hand move toward his pocket, and was instantly alert and eager to settle the matter.
"Him ve'y bad girl," he said; "him make dead for catty. You give me ten sen, I take girl homely. You have much of catty."
But Dick declined all interference, and putting the cat inside his coat he stooped down and took one of Yuki Chan's unresisting hands.