Twenty-Five“Oh look!” Lily Chung pointed to a tiny peachy-ginger colored kitten which gamboled on a pile of hay at the edge of the stagecoach yard, chasing its own tail, rolling over to punch its paws at nothing Lily could see, and then pausing to stretch luxuriously in the morning sun. She glanced over her shoulder. Selina was too busy supervising the loading of their luggage aboard the early morning Sacramento coach to hear or notice. Her bag with her precious drawing pencils, along with her mother’s trunk and jewellery case, all needed to get stowed.
They had arrived in the yard with time to kill, and as far as seventeen-year-old Lily was concerned the kitten was the best thing that had happened since she woke up. She kicked a stone with her dusty shoe and clenched her teeth. She could
