Ann always swept them for their meals, no human being was any the wiser,
and only the angels saw the white cat getting whiter and whiter and
thinner and thinner, while every day Rags grew more corpulent and
aldermanic in his figure. But as his stomach was more favorably located
than an alderman's, he could still see the surrounding country, and he
had the further advantage of possessing four legs (instead of two) to
carry it about.

Timothy was happy, too, for he was a dreamer, and this quiet life
harmonized well with the airy fabric of his dreams. He loved every stick
and stone about the old homestead already, because the place had brought
him the only glimpse of freedom and joy that he could remember in these
last bare and anxious years; and if there were other and brighter
years, far, far back in the misty gardens of the past, they only yielded
him a secret sense of "having been," a memory that could never be
captured and put into words.

Each morning he woke fearing to find his present life a vision, and each
morning he gazed with unspeakable gladness at the sweet reality that
stretched itself before his eyes as he stood for a moment at his little
window above the honeysuckle porch.

There were the cucumber frames (he had helped Jabe to make them); the
old summer house in the garden (he had held the basket of nails and
handed Jabe the tools when he patched the roof); the little workshop
where Samantha potted her tomato plants (and he had been allowed to
water them twice, with fingers trembling at the thought of too little or
too much for the tender things); and the grindstone where Jabe ground
the scythes and told him stories as he sat and turned the wheel, while
Gay sat beside them making dandelion chains. Yes, it was all there, and