Chapter 9

“There! He’s gone away mad,” mewed Fluffy. “Now what shall we do?”

“Do! Why just what we have been doing,” said Jazbury. “He wasn’t any good to us, anyway.”

“Yes, but I want to go home. Oh, I do want to go home; and we don’t know the way.”

“Why don’t we? Guess I could find it just as well as Yowler.”

“Oh, could you? Could you, Jazbury?”

“Listen, Fluffy!” said Jazbury. “There was something mother told me, and I’d forgotten all about it. I just remembered a little while ago. She said cats--and kittens, too, if they weren’t too little--could always get home from any place if they just didn’t worry about it and try to remember the way to go. All they have to do is to love their home, and run along without thinking, and then they’ll get there.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Fluffy, “but let’s go anyway. Even if we don’t get home we can’t be any more lost than we are now.”

“But we will get there,” declared Jazbury. “Come on! We might as well go right now.”

“All right; I’m ready.”

The two little kittens set out at once, and without any more talk about it. They trotted away through the green depths of the wood, and after a while the trees grew thinner, and then they came out of the wood upon a hot, sunny stretch of dusty road.

“We go this way,” said Jazbury, and he set off down the road just as if he knew exactly where he was going.

“Are you sure this is the right way?” asked Fluffy.

“Now, Fluffy, you mustn’t ask me that,” said Jazbury. “I mustn’t think about it, but just run along, and we’ll get there. Don’t you be afraid.”

Fluffy said no more, but padded along after Jazbury. Jazbury never stopped or looked around. He just went running straight on down the dusty road.

After they had gone for quite a distance Fluffy heard a noise behind them, a thudding sound, and with it a sound of rumbling and rolling. He looked around, and there behind them came a great, enormous horse and a buggy, with two ladies driving in it.

“Jazbury,” he mewed softly, “there’s something coming.”

Jazbury stopped and looked round. Then he ran over to the side of the road, and crouched down. “Come over here till they get past, Fluffy,” he said.

Fluffy trotted over and crouched down beside him.

Nearer and nearer came the horse and buggy, the horse thudding along and the buggy rumbling after it.

Just as the buggy came to where the kittens were one of the ladies cried out, “Oh, Sarah! Look there! Look at those kittens.”