Disclaimer: Enough with this silly running tally of how many cats I own. Suffice it to say that the musical isn't mine.

It was a wet, wild, blustery autumn evening in the little Scottish village of Nunrice. The rain rattled fiercely upon the slate-sheathed eaves of the parsonage, and the walls, though as sturdy as Selkirkshire carpentry could make them, nonetheless creaked unnervingly beneath the hammering winds. Yet in the parlour hearth there was a blazing golden fire, feasting on the coals and keeping the room warm and snug for the little family gathered around it: the Reverend Mr. James McCrae, perusing a well-thumbed copy of The Faithful Promiser; his wife Eliza, knitting a winter shawl for the local rag-and-bone man's wife; and nine-year-old Abigail, their only surviving child, lying on her stomach in front of the fire and staring into the flames with silent, ferocious intensity.

"Mr. Christie passed by as I was shutting up the kirk," Mr. McCrae remarked. "A busy gentleman, that; he spoke of motoring south this coming weekend, to see a man in Birmingham about supplying his business."

His wife, who had a low opinion of her fellow-subjects beyond the River Trent, gave vent to a sort of genteel snort. "South!" she said. "To the English circulating libraries; to the military widows, and the English chaplains! Faugh!"

Mr. McCrae shrugged. "About that, I'd not be knowing," he said – truthfully enough, as he, like his helpmeet, had never been in England in his life. "But it's a wonderful thing to think of, all the same. Imagine crossing hundreds of miles at any time you saw fit – not even waiting on the trains, but just setting off whenever necessity or fancy struck you. Can you imagine it, Abby my joy?" he said, glancing at his daughter with a twinkling eye.

"I wouldn't want to," said Abigail shortly. "Motors are ugly, wicked things, and Mr. Christie's silly to want one." And her hands clutched at the soft rug in front of the grate, as though seeking consolation for another, absent softness.

Mr. and Mrs. McCrae exchanged sombre glances. It had been about a month before that one of the local farmers, a sullen but good-hearted man named MacIver, had given Abigail one of his barn-cat's kittens as a birthday gift. Abigail, who had never had so much as a chick to care for before, had swiftly given every ounce of her heart to the little tom – to Jonathan, as she had called him, considering that an appropriate name to give to the best friend that ever was. For nearly the whole of October, the two of them had been all but inseparable; then, only a few days before, Jonathan, preoccupied with a moth he was chasing, had strayed into the middle of the road just as a strange motorcar (not Mr. Christie's) had come roaring through. The best that could be said was that it had been quick – and that had hardly been enough; Abigail had been inconsolable ever since.

Her parents quite understood her distress, of course, but the extremity of it rather worried them. Abigail had the sort of temper that never did anything by halves: if she was happy, there was no question of anything ever being less than perfect; if she was unhappy, then there was no goodness or light in all the vastness of Creation. No sober Presbyterian could think this a satisfactory state of mind, even for a child of eight, and Mr. McCrae was just clearing his throat to offer his daughter a word in season when, to the surprise of all, there came a loud knock on the parsonage door.

Mrs. McCrae glanced up, and cocked her head. "Now, who could that be?" she said, and laid her knitting aside and rose from her seat. With a crisp rustle of skirts, she hurried out to the front foyer, and opened the door to reveal old Mr. MacIver himself, with a dripping mackintosh over his head and a carefully knotted bundle in his arms.

"Evening, ma'am," said Mr. MacIver gruffly. "Is Miss Abigail in?"

"Aye, she's right here," said Mrs. McCrae – and this was so, for Abigail, along with Mr. McCrae, had risen only a moment after her mother and followed her into the foyer. "Won't you come in, Alastair? We'll be putting a kettle on for you…"

Mr. MacIver shook his head. "Thank you, no, ma'am," he said. "I've harness-mending to be getting back to, and mustn't be lingering here. Only I heard of Miss Abigail's misfortune with that kitten of old Topsy's that I gave to her, and I thought she might be wanting a substitute." He nudged the bundle open with a finger, and a three-month-old calico poked out her head and sniffed warily at the company. "Two of the litter we had left, and one of them far too wild a beast for a parson's home. This wee lassie's the other."

"Indeed?" said Mrs. McCrae, with a chuckle. "Well, it's a sweet enough creature she seems. Tell the good man thank-you, Abigail."

But Abigail, so far from complying, pressed her lips shut and clenched her hands into fists, and her eyes grew glassy with fiercely unreceptive sullenness. It was, Mr. McCrae thought, almost exactly the look that she had worn just before she had beaned the Adventist missionary with his own tract – a regrettable incident, for all the childish zeal it bespoke, and not one that her father cared to have repeated on his doorstep.

"Abigail," he said firmly, "tell Mr. MacIver thank-you."

Abigail's eyes flickered to his for a moment; then she took a deep breath, and mustered a polite smile. "Thank you, Mr. MacIver, for your kind intention," she said. "But I think you can't have understood what Jonathan meant to me. He wasn't something like a rug, to be replaced when it wears out; he was special and precious, and it wouldn't be loving him right to think there was anything else in the world quite like him." Her voice quivered as she spoke, and seemed for a moment on the edge of breaking, but breeding told, and she swallowed and carried on. "So you can take the kitten you've got there back with you when you go; I'm not wanting her, or any other substitute you may be having." And she curtsied daintily, and turned and left the foyer without another word.

Mr. MacIver scowled in self-reproach, and shuffled his hobnailed-booted feet noisily across the doorstep. "Aye, 'tis fair enough, that," he said. "Might have seen it myself, if I'd thought aright."

"Now, Alastair, don't you go scolding yourself for meaning well," said Mrs. McCrae. "Our Abigail's not a lass anybody can always be predicting – not even herself, I doubt. You did well bringing Jonathan's sister here; if she wasn't welcomed, 'tis no fault of yours."

"You're very kind, ma'am," said Mr. MacIver, sounding grateful if not entirely convinced. "Well, I'll be on my way, then; give Miss Abigail my love, and tell her I'm sorry to have…"

"Just a moment, Mr. MacIver." Mr. McCrae, who had been standing thoughtfully silent since his daughter's departure, now stepped forward. "I'd not be casting any aspersions on the urgency or the importance of your harness-mending, but may I ask if you might be sparing another ten minutes or so?"

Mr. MacIver furrowed his bushy eyebrows in puzzlement. "Aye, Reverend," he said, "I might that, if there were cause. Is there something you're wanting of me, then?"

For answer, Mr. McCrae wordlessly held out his hands. After a moment's mystified stare, Mr. MacIver grasped his meaning, and handed him the bundle; he patted it gently and whispered a brief reassurance to the kitten within, and then turned and followed his daughter's path out of the foyer.

Mrs. McCrae spotted the farmer's questioning look, and shook her head firmly. "Nay, Alastair, don't be asking me," she said. "You mind my saying just now that Abigail can't be predicted? If you'd been married to James for any length of time, you'd not wonder whence she inherited that trait." A fond smile stole over her face, and she added decidedly, "And if she does as much good by it as he has, it's a blessing she'll be to all who'll have known her. So don't you fret yourself, Alastair; the dear knows what he's about."

Abigail was back in front of the parlour fire, a little melancholy, a little aggrieved, and more than a little tired (decently suppressing a tantrum always cost her a fair amount of energy), when she heard a familiar footfall enter the room and come up behind her. "Is that you, Papa?" she murmured vaguely.

"It is," said Mr. McCrae. "And I've brought somebody with me – somebody to whom I think you're owing an apology, Abby."

Abigail blinked, and furrowed her brow; she was fairly sure she hadn't missed any second footfall – and besides… "Was I not polite enough to Mr. MacIver?" she said nervously. "I did try, truly…"

"I'm not meaning Mr. MacIver."

Abigail frowned, and mustered the energy to raise her head and turn around. She saw, indeed, her father standing behind her; she saw also the calico kitten poking her head out of the bundle in his arms. And, at the sight, her face darkened with renewed pique. "I don't see what wrong I've done that," she said, putting as much lofty disdain into the last word as her eight-year-old soul could manage.

"No, I'm sure you don't," said Mr. McCrae. "And the reason why is the wrong you've done. There was a time, Abigail, when you yourself were a gift offered to one who had just lost a wee treasure; would your mother not have done you a wrong, if she'd told the Lord that she'd rather have nothing than have you?"

Abigail thought of the brother and sister whom she'd only ever seen in the churchyard, and squirmed uncomfortably. Her father nodded. "'Tis not wrong to love Jonathan," he said, "or to miss him, or to wish you hadn't lost him. So it wasn't wrong for Job to rend his mantle and shave his head when his first ten children were slain in the windstorm – but nor would it have been right of him to reject the new children God sent him at the end of his trials, and to refuse to be satisfied with anything but just what he'd had before. 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord' – and if the Lord gives anew, then we ought to bless Him all the more."

"But it's not the same," said Abigail plaintively.

"No," Mr. McCrae agreed. "And where you and Mr. MacIver both erred was in thinking that it ought to be. He offered this wee one as a substitute for Jonathan; you rejected her as a substitute for Jonathan – and, all the while, all she and the Lord asked of you was to see her for the thing she is: a special creature of her own, not to be compared with Jonathan, but just as worthy as he of any love you may have to give. That one of them is older and one newer is of no consequence; what matters is that God has made them both, and poured into each as much of His love as each can receive."

Abigail bit her lip. "Then it isn't betraying Jonathan to love this one instead?" she said.

"It isn't betraying Jonathan," her father said gravely, "to love this one as well."

There was a moment's silence as Abigail struggled to conform her heart to that formula; then, with a heavy sigh, she sat up and opened her arms. "All right, Papa," she said. "I'll try. You know I'm not Mama or Job, and don't be angry with me if I fail – but I'll try."

Mr. McCrae smiled, and lowered the kitten into his daughter's lap. The kitten, finding herself in the centre of a small valley of starched gingham, stood looking around in puzzlement for a second or two; then, carefully measuring each step of each paw, she slowly made her way about the circumference of her new locale, sniffing inquisitively at each new fold of Abigail's skirt as she went. All the while, Abigail watched her progress with a sort of wary tenderness, as though she were yearning to throw open a curtain and enter into this new vision of happiness, but some still-unconvinced fragment of her conscience was staying her hand.

At length, the kitten arrived at the cleft of Abigail's right knee. She studied this for a moment, and let out a single thoughtful mew; then she dove in with a sudden pounce, snuggling her tiny form into the crevasse until only her tail was visible. Whether this was so very much more charming than anything else she had done might be debated, but it was, at any rate, the straw that finally paralysed Abigail's internal censor; she let out a little moan of delight, and, catching up the kitten's tail between her fingers, stroked and cooed and giggled until her face was streaked with happy tears.

It was perhaps half a minute later that she looked up, panting a little from sheer emotional turbulence, and met her father's gaze reflectively. "Tell me, Papa," she said. "Does the Scripture mention the names of any of Job's second daughters – the ones that came after the first were killed?"

Mr. McCrae chuckled. "As it happens," he said, "of all Job's twenty children, those are the only ones whose names the Scripture does mention." He cleared his throat. "'And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Keren-happuch. And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job.'"

"I see," Abigail murmured, looking back down at the half-buried kitten. "Well, then, would you please tell Mr. MacIver that I'm sorry to have misled him, and that I will be wanting Jemima after all?"

Mr. McCrae smiled broadly. "Gladly, my sweet," he said. "Jemima – aye, it's fitting enough. What else could a wee queen be called, in a house where all the female creatures have always been 'handsome as the day'?"

But his daughter had re-engrossed herself in her new pet's charms, and his raillery was lost on her. With one last chuckle, therefore, he slipped quietly out of the parlour, and left Jemima and her mistress to begin their new life together.