Sour Puss Read Free Page B

the trip, and Fair wore a morning suit, which makes him more handsome, if that’s possible.”
    “He is a handsome fellow. How come they didn’t take a honeymoon?”
    “Ha,”
Mrs. Murphy laughed.
“Harry told Fair that every day with him was a honeymoon, besides which they’d been married before so why not just press on? I think they’ll take a little vacation midsummer. Anyway, Simon, it was pretty good. I’m surprised you didn’t come out for the party yesterday. Lots of little tidbits on the grass.”
    “Too many people. And so many people are afraid of possums. They think I’m ugly.”
    “Nah,”
Mrs. Murphy lied. She thought Simon looked as he should.
    “Well, is there anything left out there?”
    “With Tucker and Pewter on patrol?”
She laughed.
    “Pipe down!”
came a stentorian voice from the cupola.
    “Sorry, Flatface.”
    The huge owl ruffled her feathers, looked down.
“Chatterers. I never met two creatures who could run their big flannel mouths like you two. I had a busy night.”
    “Okay.”
Simon didn’t want to get on the bad side of his frightening roommate.
    “If she had little owlets, she’d be nicer,”
Mrs. Murphy whispered, her lustrous green eyes bright.
    Simon whispered back,
“If she had owlets, then we’d have the daddy to deal with, too. They raise them together, you know. One owl is bad enough. At least she’s a great horned owl and she sings so beautifully.”
    “True.”
Mrs. Murphy admired Flatface’s melodic deep voice, a dark alto.
    “Think Harry’s happy?”
    “Yes. She’s struggled so long over these years, you know, just making ends meet, and now she has his help, they’ve bought Blair’s two hundred thirty acres, and those pastures are really good, plus she’s reviving the old Alverta peach orchard. Rev. Jones bought the house and ten acres, so it worked out. Blair’s farm was the Jones home place, remember? Harry and Susan are timbering Susan’s land, the old Bland Wade tract. She gets a commission for that, and the girls have started their sunflower business. They’re going to start a small tree nursery, too.”
    “What about the grapes?”
    “Well,”
Mrs. Murphy lowered her voice as she realized she had raised her level to a normal tone,
“she’s put in a quarter acre of Petit Manseng. A white kind. It will take about three years to really produce. She’s being cautious. Too cautious, I think.”
    With all the preparations for the wedding, Mrs. Murphy and Simon hadn’t had a good jaw in weeks.
    Simon remarked,
“Will be pretty easy to grow.”
    “You know last fall when Harry was in such a crisis over what to do after leaving the P.O.—”
    Before Mrs. Murphy could finish, a bloodcurdling scream of triumph wafted out the animal door of the closed tack room.
    Simon, not the bravest fellow, shrank back into his nest in the hay bales.
“A dragon!”
    “A gray one.”
Mrs. Murphy, the bravest of all tiger cats, leapt to the edge of the hayloft, then backed down the ladder fastened flat to the wall. She burst through the animal door to behold Pewter, mouse between her paws.
    “Triumph!”
Pewter, mouth wide open, eyes wild, bellowed.
    “Brute!”
The mouse wasn’t going down without a fight.
    “Pewter, how’d you do it?”
    “She cheated, she lied!”
the little mouse, Martha, accused the cat in whose front paws she was securely imprisoned.
    “Bull!”
Pewter drew her up to eye level.
    “You haven’t kept the bargain,”
Mrs. Murphy reminded the mouse.
“So she’s within her rights to snap your neck.”
    “We are keeping the bargain!”
Martha defended herself.
    “Then why is there so much noise back there and why do I see you all running around?”
Mrs. Murphy coolly surveyed the back of the tack trunk.
    Many little noses were poking out of the rather grand entrance to their living quarters.
    “Sugar high,”
Martha stubbornly replied.
    “Oh, come on, there isn’t that much candy left in here,”
Pewter said