“Yes! Sure! They keep away the mice, because there’s so many cats and kittens here, the mice couldn’t crowd in. I tell you I can’t stand it—and there’s that old Sandy-face with four kittens in the basket behind the flour barrels in the back room. Those kittens have got their eyes open. Soon you can’t catch them at all. I tell you, Myra, you’ve got to get rid of them.” “Sandy-face and all?” wailed Myra, aghast. “Yes,” declared her father. “That’ll be five of ’em gone in a bunch. Then maybe we can at least _count_ those that are left.” “Oh, Myra!” cried Agnes. “Give them to us.” “What?” asked the store-keeper’s girl. “Not the whole five?” “Yes,” agreed Agnes, recklessly. “Mrs. McCall says we are over-run with mice, and I expect we could feed more than five cats for a long time on the mouse supply of the old Corner House.” “Goodness! Old Sandy-face is a real nice mother cat——” “Let’s see her,” proposed Agnes, and followed Myra out into the store-room of the grocery. In a broken hand-basket in which some old clothes had been dropped, Sandy-face had made her children’s cradle. They looked like four spotted, black balls. The old cat herself was with them, and she stretched and yawned, and looked up at the two girls with perfect trust in her speckled countenance. Her face looked as though salt and pepper, or sand, had been sprinkled upon it. Her body was marked with faint stripes of black and gray, which proved her part “tiger” origin. She was “double-toed” on her front feet, and her paws were big, soft cushions that could unsheath dangerous claws in an instant. “She ought to be a good mouser,” said Agnes, reflectively. It _did_ look like a big contract to cart five cats home at once! “But I wouldn’t feel right to separate the family—especially when the kittens are so young,” Myra said. “If your folks will let you take them—well! it would be nice,” she added, for she was a born lover of cats and could not think, without positive pain, of having any of the cunning kittens cut short in their feline careers. “Oh, Ruth will be glad,” said Agnes, with assurance. “So will Mrs. McCall. We need cats—we just actually _need_ them, Myra.” “But how will you get them home?” asked the other girl, more practical than the impulsive Agnes. “Goodness! I hadn’t thought of that,” confessed Agnes. “You see, cats are funny creatures,” Myra declared. “Sometimes they find their way home again, even if they are carried miles and miles away.” “But if I take the kittens, too—wouldn’t she stay with her own kittens?” “Well—p’r’aps. But the thing _is_, how are you going to carry them all?” “Say! they’re all in this old basket,” said Agnes. “Can’t I carry them just as they are?” She picked the basket up. Old Sandy-face just “mewed” a little, but did not offer to jump out. “Oh!” gasped Agnes. “They’re heavy.” “You couldn’t carry them all that way. And if Sandy saw a dog——” “Maybe I’ll have to blindfold her?” suggested Agnes. “Put her in a bag!” cried Myra.