And so
the vile, vixenish virago wished the cat was dead. And when slender,
slim, slippery Sly Slick, Esq., tried to persuade the widow to swindle
her neighbor, the cat mewed furiously. And so it came that Mr. Slick did
not like the wee widow's wonderful cat. In fact, he said it was a
nuisance. And Tilda Tattle, the tiresome-tongued, town tale-bearer, could
not abide the cat, because it mewed all the time she was tattling.
And so it happened that good Deacon Pettibone, and his wife, who was even
better than the deacon, were about the only visitors the wee, weird Widow
Wiggins had. As the deacon never said any harm of anybody, and as the
deacon's wife never thought any harm, and as the wee widow woman never
felt any harm, the cat would lie stretched out on the hearth all day
while these three good people talked.
But though the deacon was good, and his wife was better, yet the deacon's
oldest son was not the boy he ought to have been. Somehow or other, as it
will happen sometimes, he listened to everybody but his father and his
mother. Bad company led him astray. At first the deacon did not suspect
him; but when he showed signs of having been drinking, the deacon was
very severe. I am afraid there was not enough of kindness in the father's
severity.
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