‘I’ll never tease you again,’ he tried to say, softly – but that was not what he said. What he said was ‘Purrrr.’
‘Dear pussy, nice poor pussy, then,’ said Mabel, and she hid away the sardine-tin and did not tell any one. This seemed unjust to Maurice until he remembered that, of course, Mabel thought that he was really Lord Hugh, and that the person who had tied the tin to his tail was her brother Maurice. Then he was half grateful. She carried him down, in soft, safe arms, to the kitchen, and asked cook to give him some milk.
‘Tell me to change back into Maurice,’ said Maurice who was quite worn out by his cattish experiences. But no one heard him. What they heard was, ‘Meaow – Meaow – Meeeaow!’
Then Maurice saw how he had been tricked. He could be changed back into a boy as soon as any one said to him, ‘Leave off being a cat and be Maurice again,’ but his tongue had no longer the power to ask any one to say it.
He did not sleep well that night. For one thing he was not accustomed to sleeping on the kitchen hearthrug, and the blackbeetles were too many and too cordial. He was glad when cook came down and turned him out into the garden, where the October frost still lay white on the yellowed stalks of sunflowers and nasturtiums. He took a walk, climbed a tree, failed to catch a bird, and felt better. He began also to feel hungry. A delicious scent came stealing out of the back kitchen door. Oh, joy, there were to be herrings for breakfast! Maurice hastened in and took his place on his usual chair.
His mother said, ‘Down, puss,’ and gently tilted the chair so that Maurice fell off it. Then the family had herrings. Maurice said, ‘You might give me some,’ and he said it so often that his father, who, of course, heard only mewings, said: —
‘For goodness’ sake put that cat out of the room.’
Maurice breakfasted later, in the dust-bin, on herring heads.
But he kept himself up with a new and splendid idea. They would give him milk presently, and then they should see.
He spent the afternoon sitting on the sofa in the dining-room, listening to the conversation of his father and mother. It is said that listeners never hear any good of themselves. Maurice heard so much that he was surprised and humbled. He heard his father say that he was a fine, plucky little chap, but he needed a severe lesson, and Dr. Strongitharm was the man to give it to him. He heard his mother say things that made his heart throb in his throat and the tears prick behind those green cat-eyes of his. He had always thought his parents a little bit unjust. Now they did him so much more than justice that he felt quite small and mean inside his cat-skin.
‘He’s a dear, good, affectionate boy,’ said mother. ‘It’s only his high spirits. Don’t you think, darling, perhaps you were a little hard on him?’
‘It was for his own good,’ said father.
‘Of course,’ said mother; ‘but I can’t bear to think of him at that dreadful school.’
‘Well – ,’ father was beginning, when Jane came in with the tea-things on a clattering tray, whose sound made Maurice tremble in every leg. Father and mother began to talk about the weather.
Maurice felt very affectionately to both his parents. The natural way of showing this was to jump on to the sideboard and thence on to his father’s shoulders. He landed there on his four padded feet, light as a feather, but father was not pleased.
‘Bother the cat!’ he cried. ‘Jane, put it out of the room.’
Maurice was put out. His great idea, which was to be carried out with milk, would certainly not be carried out in the dining-room. He sought the kitchen, and, seeing a milk-can on the window-ledge, jumped up beside the can and patted it as he had seen Lord Hugh do.
‘My!’ said a friend of Jane’s who happened to be there, ‘ain’t that cat clever – a perfect moral, I call her.’
‘He’s nothing to boast of this time,’ said cook. ‘I will say for Lord Hugh he’s not often taken in with a empty can.’
This was naturally mortifying for Maurice, but he pretended not to hear, and jumped from the window to the tea-table and patted the milk-jug.
‘Come,’ said the cook, ‘that’s more like it,’ and she poured him out a full saucer and set it on the floor.
Now was the chance Maurice had longed for. Now he could carry out that idea of his. He was very thirsty, for he had had nothing since that delicious breakfast in the dust-bin. But not for worlds would he have drunk the milk. No. He carefully dipped his right paw in it, for his idea was to make letters with it on the kitchen oil-cloth. He meant to write: ‘Please tell me to leave off being a cat and be Maurice again,’ but he found his paw a very clumsy pen, and he had to rub out the first ‘P’ because it only looked like an accident. Then he tried again and actually did make a ‘P’ that any fair-minded person could have read quite easily.
‘I wish they’d notice,’ he said, and before he got the ‘l’ written they did notice.
‘Drat the cat,’ said cook; ‘look how he’s messing the floor up.’
And she took away the milk.
Maurice put pride aside and mewed to have the milk put down again. But he did not get it.
Very weary, very thirsty, and very tired of being Lord Hugh, he presently found his way to the schoolroom, where Mabel with patient toil was doing her home-lessons. She took him on her lap and stroked him while she learned her French verb. He felt that he was growing very fond of her. People were quite right to be kind to dumb animals. Presently she had to stop stroking him and do a map. And after that she kissed him and put him down and went away. All the time she had been doing the map, Maurice had had but one thought: Ink!
The moment the door had closed behind her – how sensible people were who closed doors gently – he stood up in her chair with one paw on the map and the other on the ink. Unfortunately, the inkstand top was made to dip pens in, and not to dip paws. But Maurice was desperate. He deliberately upset the ink – most of it rolled over the table-cloth and fell pattering on the carpet, but with what was left he wrote quite plainly, across the map: —
‘Please tell Lord Hugh to stop being a cat and be Mau rice again.’
‘There!’ he said; ‘they can’t make any mistake about that.’ They didn’t. But they made a mistake about who had done it, and Mabel was deprived of jam with her supper bread.
Her 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.’
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