The Mystery Megapack

every nook and hole in the place. You got to butter their paws!”
    “You— what ?” Mrs. Weston gasped. “Butter their—”
    “Yes’m. Never fails; you look and see.”
    With some difficulty Jed succeeded in capturing the frightened, bobtailed gray creature, which he held despite its scratching and wriggling, while Lizzie, with the skill of long practice, took a spoonful of butter from the dish on the table, and thoroughly rubbed it into each one of the four paws. This done, Jed set the cat down.
    Instead of running about as before, the cat looked slightly puzzled. It shook first one, then the other of its paws; seated itself, and carefully licked each one clean. The process took some time; and when done, the cat seemed for the first time to notice its saucer of milk. It sniffed daintily at it, found it good, and lapped up the very last drop, as well as another saucerful which Lizzie poured. Thereafter the city cat sat peacefully down beside the fireplace, blinked its eyes, washed its whiskers clean, and began to purr.
    “Well, I’ll be darned!” said Weston. “How come?”
    Jed chuckled. “Seems like the one thing a cat regards above all else, is to clean itself of anything that gits onto it; ’specially its feet. While it was licking off the butter, it forgot it was in a strange place; and the taste of butter made it remember it was hungry. So, having eaten in a place, why, that makes it seem like home. Same as I hope you folks do after eating ma’s molasses cakes and tea!”
    Annie Weston laughed. “We certainly do, don’t we, Frank? You see, this is really our honeymoon! Yes, when we were married all that Frank could spare was just three days. Of course, we went to Atlantic City! And every year since then, we’ve promised ourselves a real honeymoon. And this is it; we’re going to stay two months, and forget business and everything. Going to wear old clothes, and go to bed with the chickens, and rise with the sun. Why, we haven’t even subscribed for a daily paper! We’ve put New York behind us, stock-market reports, theatrical reviews, divorces, crimes and all. It’s quiet we want, and just to be ourselves and get acquainted.”
    Jed and Lizzie both nodded appreciatively.
    “Well, you’ll git all the quiet you want! Nothing ever happens here more exciting than a hen stealing her nest, or a school of mackerel reported out in the bay, or the like of that. We ain’t even had a funeral for more’n a year. Folks live long, up in these parts, even if they don’t live very fast!”
    While Jed showed Weston about the yard, and explained how to start the wooden pump if it got obstinate, and pointed out the ruinous chicken run and the bearing trees of what had once been a fine fruit orchard, his wife took Mrs. Weston all about the house, with which she fell in love at once. It was primitive to a degree the city woman had never dreamed of; no running water in the house, a wooden sink, scrubbed clean, great beds with queer contraptions of tauted ropes for springs, shelves of quaint old china and pewter, everything immaculately clean, and nothing lacking save modern plumbing and lighting. The latter consisted of old kerosene lamps, and tallow candles.
    “It’s plain,” Lizzie admitted. “But it served old Miss Jarvis more’n fifty years. She was born and died right in this house, and her father before her. This chinaware and the furniture was hers. It all belongs to a niece, who lives out to Minnesota. We have the leasing of the house. An artist had it last summer. He spattered paint some; I cleaned it off as well as I could.”
    The Hoopers rattled off in their car, cordially urging their tenants to call on them for any help needed. They could supply milk, butter, eggs, vegetables, salt pork, fresh-killed fowls, advice, and back numbers of a weekly newspaper, the Farmer’s Almanac, and the Rural Agriculturist.
    Alone, for almost the first time in five years, the Westons looked at one another, laughed happily, took hands and executed an improvised dance about their living room, kitchen, and parlor. The cat, already entirely at home, was out in the yard clumsily attempting to catch grasshoppers, an exciting game which had not, in its brief life passed in a bird-and-animal shop, been called to its attention.
    “Are you going to be contented, Frank?” his wife asked a little wistfully.
    “Am I? Why, I’ve left everything in such shape that I don’t even want to see a newspaper; and only