er assurance that some naughty boy must have come through the window
and done it while she was not there convinced nobody, and, indeed, the
window was shut and bolted.

Maurice, wild with indignation, did not mend matters by seizing the
opportunity of a few minutes' solitude to write:--

'It was not Mabel
it was Maur
ice I mean Lord Hugh,'

because when that was seen Mabel was instantly sent to bed.

'It's not fair!' cried Maurice.

'My dear,' said Maurice's father, 'if that cat goes on mewing to this
extent you'll have to get rid of it.'

[Illustration: When Jane went in to put Mabel's light out Maurice crept
in too.]

Maurice said not another word. It was bad enough to be a cat, but to be
a cat that was 'got rid of'! He knew how people got rid of cats. In a
stricken silence he left the room and slunk up the stairs--he dared not
mew again, even at the door of Mabel's room. But when Jane went in to
put Mabel's light out Maurice crept in too, and in the dark tried with
stifled mews and purrs to explain to Mabel how sorry he was. Mabel
stroked him and he went to sleep, his last waking thought amazement at
the blindness that had once made him call her a silly little kid.

If you have ever been a cat you will understand something of what
Maurice endured during the dreadful days that followed. If you have not,
I can never make you understand fully. There was the affair of the
fishmonger's tray balanced on the wall by the back door--the delicious
curled-up whiting; Maurice knew as well as you do that one mustn't steal
fish out of other people's trays, but the cat that he was didn't know.
There was an inward struggle--and Maurice was beaten by the cat-nature.
Later he was beaten by the cook.

Then there was that very painful incident with the butcher's dog, the
flight across gardens, the safety of the plum tree gained only just in
time.

And, worst of all, despair took hold of him, for he saw that nothing he
could do would make any one say those simple words that would release
him. He had hoped that Mabel might at last be made to understand, but
the ink had failed him; she did not understand his subdued mewings, and
when he got the cardboard letters and made the same sentence with them
Mabel only thought it was that naughty boy who came through locked
windows. Somehow he could not spell before any one--his nerves were not
what they had been. His brain now gave him no new ideas. He felt that he
was real