Mike Flannery | Page 6

been offered to her twice. The first time she
saw it she knew it was dead, and the second time she saw it she knew it
was, if anything, more dead than it had been the first time. The
conclusion was obvious. A cat had been sent to her in a box. She had
refused to receive a dead cat, and the expressmen had taken the box
away again. Now there was a live, but sick, cat in the box. She had her
opinion of expressmen, express companies, and especially of the firm
of Hibbert & Jones. This full opinion she sent to Hibbert & Jones by
the next mail.
The next morning Flannery was feeling fine. He whistled as he went to
the nine--twenty train, and whistled as he came back to the office with
his hand-truck full of packages and the large express envelope with the
red seals on the back snugly tucked in his inside pocket, but when he
opened the envelope and read the first paper that fell out he stopped
whistling.
"Agent, Westcote," said the letter. "Regarding W.B. 23645, Hibbert &
Jones, consignor of the cat you are holding in storage, advises us that
the consignee claims cat you have is not the cat shipped by consignor.
Return cat by first train to this office. If the cat is not strong enough to
travel alone have veterinary accompany it. Yrs. truly, Interurban
Express Company, per J."
At first a grin spread over the face of Flannery. "'Not sthrong enough t'
travel alone'!" he said with a chuckle. "If iver there was a sthrong cat
'tis that wan be this time, an' 't w'u'd be a waste av ixpinse t' hire a----"
Suddenly his face sobered.
He glanced out of the back door at the square mile of hummocky sand
and clay.
"'Return cat be firrst trrain t' this office,'" he repeated blankly. He left
his seat and went to the door and looked out. "Return th' cat," he said,
and stepped out upon the edge of the soft, new soil. It was all alike in

its recently dug appearance. "Th' cat, return it," he repeated, taking
steps this way and that way, with his eyes on the clay at his feet. He
walked here and there, but one place looked like the others. There was
room for ten thousand cats, and one cat might have been buried in any
one of ten thousand places. Flannery sighed. Orders were orders, and
he went back to the office and locked the doors. He borrowed a
coal-scoop from the grocer next door and went out and began to dig up
the clay and sand. He dug steadily and grimly. Never, perhaps, in the
history of the world had a man worked so hard to dig up a dead cat.
Even in ancient Egypt, where the cat was a sacred animal, they did not
dig them up when they had them planted. Quite the contrary: it was a
crime to dig them up; and Flannery, as he dug, had a feeling that it
would be almost a crime to dig up this one. Never, perhaps, did a man
dig so hard to find a thing he really did not care to have.
Flannery dug all that morning. At lunch-time he stopped digging--and
went without his lunch--long enough to deliver the packages that had
come on the early train. As he passed the station he saw a crowd of
boys playing hockey with an old tomato-can, and he stopped. When he
reached the office he was followed by sixteen boys. Some of them had
spades, some of them had small fire-shovels, some had only pointed
sticks, but all were ready to dig. He showed them where he had already
dug.
"Twinty-five cints apiece, annyhow," he said, "an' five dollars fer th'
lucky wan that finds it."
"All right," said one. "Now what is it we are to dig for?"
"'Tis a cat," said Flannery, "a dead wan."
"Go on!" cried the boy sarcastically. "What is it we are to dig for?"
"I can get you a dead cat, mister," said another. "Our cat died."
"'T will not do," said Flannery. "'T is a special cat I'm wantin'. 'T is a
long-haired cat, an' 't was dead a long time. Ye can't mistake it whin ye
come awn to it. If ye dig up a cat ye know no wan w'u'd want t' have,

that 's it."
The sixteen boys dug, and Flannery, in desperation, dug, but a square
mile is a large plot of ground to dig over. No one, having observed that
cat on the morning when Timmy planted it, would have believed it
could be put in any place where it could not be instantly found again. It
had seemed