There was room for ten thousand cats, and one cat might have been buried
in any one of ten thousand places. Flannery sighed. Orders were orders,
and he went back to the office and locked the doors. He borrowed a
coal-scoop from the grocer next door and went out and began to dig up
the clay and sand. He dug steadily and grimly. Never, perhaps, in the
history of the world had a man worked so hard to dig up a dead cat. Even
in ancient Egypt, where the cat was a sacred animal, they did not dig
them up when they had them planted. Quite the contrary: it was a crime
to dig them up; and Flannery, as he dug, had a feeling that it would be
almost a crime to dig up this one. Never, perhaps, did a man dig so hard
to find a thing he really did not care to have.
Flannery dug all that morning. At lunch-time he stopped digging--and
went without his lunch--long enough to deliver the packages that had
come on the early train. As he passed the station he saw a crowd of boys
playing hockey with an old tomato-can, and he stopped. When he reached
the office he was followed by sixteen boys. Some of them had spades,
some of them had small fire-shovels, some had only pointed sticks, but
all were ready to dig.
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