Another Mouth

Maura has no beef or blood pudding to offer when the young strangers come knocking. No mackerel, no lamprey, no lamb. They won’t take stale bread, or fish heads, or chard, but sometimes, sometimes they’ll take dairy. Before daybreak she drained Old Bess’s udders, half-filling a small tin pail. At dusk she placed saucers of milk on the stoop, laced with arsenic and lye—but poor Nally had quickly lapped it all up, poor, poor little kitten, too hungry to know he was eating death.