Doctor Geddes's Mandy had brought over the black kittens and their
mother. Mary Magdalen made sure of their staying at home by the
simple process of buttering their paws. In South Carolina, when you
want a cat to stay in your house, you butter its paws and let it
lick the butter off leisurely, the while you whisper in its left
ear: "_Stay in my house for keeps, cat!_" The cat will ever
thereafter play Ruth to your Naomi.
Our cat was Mrs. Belinda Black, and her children were Potty Black
and Sir Thomas More Black, this last being a creature of noble mien
and a meditative turn of mind.
"Homage and praise to Bast, the cat-headed, the wise one, the great
goddess!" purred Alicia, stroking Mrs. Belinda Black's satiny head.
"And may Sekhet the Cat of the Sun aid me, a devotee at her shrine,
to butter the paws of some two-legged cats in Hyndsville!"
"You-all's dinnah 's waitin'." Mary Magdalen stubbornly held to the
notion that any meal eaten between breakfast and night was dinner;
lunch being sandwiches and fried chicken taken out of a basket at
church picnics and eaten out of one's hand, or lap, for choice.
"What was de text to-day, Miss Sophy? Ah sort o' likes to chaw easy
on a mout'ful o' text whilst Ah 'm washin' up mah dishes.
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