ly growing like a cat in his mind. His interest in his meals
grew beyond even what it had been when they were a schoolboy's meals. He
hunted mice with growing enthusiasm, though the loss of his whiskers to
measure narrow places with made hunting difficult.

He grew expert in bird-stalking, and often got quite near to a bird
before it flew away, laughing at him. But all the time, in his heart, he
was very, very miserable. And so the week went by.

Maurice in his cat shape dreaded more and more the time when Lord Hugh
in the boy shape should come back from Dr. Strongitharm's. He knew--who
better?--exactly the kind of things boys do to cats, and he trembled to
the end of his handsome half-Persian tail.

And then the boy came home from Dr. Strongitharm's, and at the first
sound of his boots in the hall Maurice in the cat's body fled with
silent haste to hide in the boot-cupboard.

Here, ten minutes later, the boy that had come back from Dr.
Strongitharm's found him.

Maurice fluffed up his tail and unsheathed his claws. Whatever this boy
was going to do to him Maurice meant to resist, and his resistance
should hurt the boy as much as possible. I am sorry to say Maurice swore
softly among the boots, but cat-swearing is not really wrong.

'Come out, you old duffer,' said Lord Hugh in the boy shape of Maurice.
'I'm not going to hurt you.'

'I'll see to that,' said Maurice, backing into the corner, all teeth and
claws.

'Oh, I've had such a time!' said Lord Hugh. 'It's no use, you know, old
chap; I can see where you are by your green eyes. My word, they do
shine. I've been caned and shut up in a dark room and given thousands of
lines to write out.'

'I've been beaten, too, if you come to that,' mewed Maurice. 'Besides
the butcher's dog.'

It was an intense relief to speak to some one who could understand his
mews.

'Well, I suppose it's Pax for the future,' said Lord Hugh; 'if you
won't come out, you won't. Please leave off being a cat and be Maurice
again.'

And instantly Maurice, amid a heap of goloshes and old tennis bats, felt
with a swelling heart that he was no longer a cat. No more of those
undignified four legs, those tiresome pointed ears, so difficult to
wash, that furry coat, that contemptible tail, and that terrible
inability to express all one's feelings in two words--'mew' and 'purr.'

He scrambled out of the cupboard, and the boots and goloshes fell off
him like spray off a bather.

He stood up