“Oh, well, it isn’t night yet, and before dark some one may come. That man whom I saw going away may come back. I’ll just wait a bit.”
So Blackie waited and waited, but no one came. It was late afternoon now, and the shadows were getting longer and longer, as the sun went farther and farther down in the west. No more children passed the house, for they were all home from school now, and were playing their games, and having fun.
“I guess Mabel and Arthur are playing, too,” thought Blackie. “I wonder if they miss me?”
The two children did indeed look for the black cat when they came home from school, but not finding her they thought little about it at the time.
“I guess she has gone over to play with the cat next door,” said Arthur.
“I guess so, too,” said his sister. “Come on down the street and we’ll play with the Blake children. Tommie Blake asked me to come over after school.”
So Arthur and Mabel ran off to play, not thinking any more about Blackie for a while, though afterwards, when she did not come home, the children did not know what to think, and they looked all over for their pet.
But this story is just about Blackie, and not so much about Arthur or Mabel, though I may mention them once in a while. Now I must tell you what happened to the black cat.
She wandered all over the house once more, now and then jumping up on a window sill that fronted on the street, to give her mewing cry. But if any one heard her no one tried to get her out of the locked and vacant house.
“I must do something. I really must!” said Blackie to herself at last. “Otherwise I shall have to stay in this house all night with nothing to eat. I’ll go upstairs again and see if there is something to eat up there. The family may have left something when they moved out.”
Upstairs went Blackie once more, and she hurried through the different rooms, for it was getting dusk now. Not a thing to eat could poor Blackie find.
At last she came to another flight of stairs that seemed to lead up to the roof.
“Why, that’s queer,” said the black cat. “I did not notice them before. I wonder what they are for? I must go up and find out.”
Blackie walked up these other stairs. They were narrow and quite steep, and when the cat reached the top she could look up and see the sky through a crack.