Dixie Martin, the Girl of Woodford''s Cañon

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE THE RETURN OF TOPSY

  "Dixie Martin, come quick if you want to see something. Oh-ee! It'ssomething you've been wanting for weeks and weeks."

  It was Carol who called. The small curly-headed girl was hanging outclothes in the sunny yard, back of the log cabin, while the older sisterstood on a box beside a washtub in the shade of a spreading pine tree.

  Hearing the excited voice of her little sister calling to her, Dixiehastily wrung out the pair of patched blue rompers that she was washing,and, with soapy suds glistening on her hands, she ran around the house,wondering what she was to see.

  To her great joy, coming across the garden toward them was no less acreature than her long-strayed and much-loved cat, Topsy.

  With a cry of delight, Dixie wiped the suds from her hands on her blueall-over apron, and rushing at the rather thin and rusty-looking cat,she caught it up in her arms and kissed it on the nose, eyes, and evenon the paws.

  "Oh, you dearest, darlingest, belovedest!" she exclaimed. "Wherever haveyou been? You look like a reg'lar tramp cat, and no wonder,--your coathasn't been sleeked for three weeks if it's a day. Didn't you love yourDixie any more, that you ran away and wouldn't come back? You don't knowhow lonesome I've been."

  The little girl's face was burrowed in the soft black hair. Thepussy-cat purred its contentment when its little mistress sat on a stumpnear by to cuddle it in her lap, but suddenly Topsy flipped up an earand sat erect, as though she had just thought of something. Then, beforethe astonished girls could guess what it was all about, away the catdarted toward an old abandoned shed down near the apple-orchard, soonreappearing with a very small something in its mouth.

  The older girl had turned back to the washtub, but another exclamationas excited as the first brought her whirling about.

  "Dix Martin, Topsy's done gone and had kittens. Oh-ee, do look! Isn't ita little beauty? It's black, like its mamma, but its spots are white."

  Topsy, holding her tail proudly erect, placed the wee pussy at Dixie'sfeet, then looked up in a manner that seemed to say, "There now, what doyou think of that for a baby?"

  Dixie lifted the soft cuddly little thing, and was about to tell thehappy mother that it was indeed a darling, when, with a queer littleshort meow, the cat again turned and trotted off toward the shed, tosoon reappear with another wee pussy, but this one was as white as thedriven snow.

  "Oh-h!" the two girls breathed a long sigh of admiration, for never hadthere been a lovelier pussy, they were sure. Just then Ken, with an axover his shoulder, appeared from the mountain-trail, whither he had beento cut wood for their winter fires.

  "What you-all got there?" he called. And when he saw that they werebeckoning excitedly, he threw his axe to the ground and ran toward them.

  "Gee whiz! Aren't they beauts?" the boy exclaimed with genuineadmiration. "They're 'most as handsome as my little pig," he addedteasingly.

  "Why, Ken Martin, little pigs aren't warm and soft and cuddly, nor babygoats, either," Carol began, when Dixie interrupted, the light ofinspiration in her thin, freckled face.

  "Oh, Caroly, you've always wished you had a white pussy, and so you mayhave this one all for your very own, and Ken can have the other."

  "Me?" the boy exclaimed wide-eyed. "I don't want a cat. They're pets forgirls."

  "Well, maybe that's so. Girls like cuddly things." Then, to the motherpuss, Dixie said: "Well, Topsy-cat, we're ever so glad that you havesuch nice babies, and won't Jimmy-Boy be pleased when he wakes up, butnow I must get back to my work, for this is wash-day. I want to getthrough as soon as ever I can, for something--oh, so interesting!--isgoing to happen this very afternoon. I am to go up to teacher's to havea lesson."

  Dixie did not say what the lesson was to be, but she glanced at hersister and thought, "If Carol only knew that I am to have a lesson inmaking her a blue-silk dress, wouldn't she be the happiest girl thatever was?"

  The younger girl had no desire to accompany Dixie to Miss Bayley'scabin. The very word "lesson" did not appeal to her on a gloriousSaturday. After taking the kittens back to the shed and making them asofter bed, the girls finished the washing; then at two o'clock theydonned their best gingham dresses and started out together, but soonparted, as Carol was going to the Valley Ranch to visit Sue Piggins, tohear what had happened during the week at the girls' boarding-schoolover in Reno, which Sue attended.