It isn't safe to keep such an ugly
creature a day longer.' Dinah was apparently fast asleep on her cushion
in the corner of the kitchen lounge when these words were spoken. In a
few minutes she jumped down, walked slowly across the room and out at
the kitchen door, and we never saw her again."
"Why, how queer! What became of her?"
"We never knew. We inquired in the neighborhood, and searched the barn
and the wood-shed, and in every place we could think of where she would
be likely to hide, but we could get no trace of her, and when weeks
passed and she did not return we concluded that she was dead."
"You don't think--_do_ you think, Miss Ruth, that she understood what
was said and knew if she stayed she would have to be killed?"
"_I_ do," said Mollie, positively. "I'm sure of it!--and so the poor
thing went off and drowned herself, or, maybe, died of a broken heart."
"Oh!" said Nellie Dimock, "poor Dinah Diamond!"
"Nonsense, Mollie!" said Susie Elliot. "Cats don't die of broken
hearts."
"She had been ailing for some days," Miss Ruth explained, "refusing her
food and looking forlorn and miserable, and I am inclined to think
instinct taught her that her end was near. You know wild animals creep
away into some solitary place to die, and Dinah had a drop or two of
wild-cat blood in her veins.
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