She was glad to get indoors, into her own house—as she’d come to think of the low room her father rented from the building’s owner—where the single-chambered space was always filled with welcome warmth and happiness.

Captain Graeme came, too, standing squarely in the doorway like a guardian, as lightly padding, almost skipping footsteps came to greet them at a childish run.

Little Bessie, not yet two, but already with twice as many words stored in her brain than it seemed able to keep hold of all at once, so they kept tumbling out in speech and song and constant, random questions.

“Whatsat?” she asked Lily, reaching up toward the bundle in the apron. “What did ye bring home?”

Lily crouched to show her. “Careful, now. Be gentle.”

Lily’s father, who’d been resting on the larger bed set in the corner of the one low-ceilinged chamber, rose with a groan to come and see. “Oh, God, what is it now?”

Except the wink he sent to Captain Graeme over Lily’s head betrayed him. He might have a temper, and she’d witnessed it, but he was never angry with his children.

Jamie, who till now had stood and held his tongue beside the captain in the doorway, answered, “It’s a cat.”

When her father’s wife, Jean, set her kitchen work down with a look of dismay, the captain, in defense of Lily, clarified, “A kitten. With no mother, so I’m told.”

Her father, in the tone he used to tell her things he knew she would not wish to hear, said, “Lily, it’s a pretty thing, it is, but ye ken Jean already telt ye she cannot abide a creature in the house.”

“She’s not a creature, she’s a kitten, and she’ll help protect the baby,” Lily argued. “Just this morning ye were saying that the mice ran clear across the baby’s blanket. Well, the kitten won’t allow that, if she lives with us. And anyway, Jean has a loving heart, it’s not so hard. I have no mother, either, and she welcomed me.”

She paused for breath, and looked to see Jean with one hand upon her heart, her dark eyes glistening. And then Jean glanced across at Lily’s father, and their eyes met, and Jean shrugged a little helplessly.

“She has ye there,” her father said.

And Lily had her kitten.

Jean tried to protest that she had enough fleas in her household. “Am I not plagued with them enough from our own bedding, do I need more carried in from out of doors?”

Lily’s father said, “Perhaps our fleas will better like the kitten and leave you in peace.”

Jean rolled her eyes, and fetched a fine-toothed horn comb that she gave to Lily. “Comb your kitten well with that,” she said, “and kill whatever fleas ye find on her. And she’ll sleep in a basket on the floor, mind, not in bed with ye and Bessie.”

But her heart, as Lily knew, was not so hard, and she set down a dish of water and of scraps to feed the kitten while the children gathered round it on the floor, then asked the captain, “Will ye stay to sup?”