if I say that, I shall turn into a cat?'

'Of course,' said the cat.

'Oh, yes, I see,' said Maurice. 'But I'm not taking any, thanks. I don't
want to be a cat for always.'

'You needn't,' said Lord Hugh. 'You've only got to get some one to say
to you, "Please leave off being a cat and be Maurice again," and there
you are.'

Maurice thought of Dr. Strongitharm's. He also thought of the horror of
his father when he should find Maurice gone, vanished, not to be traced.
'He'll be sorry, then,' Maurice told himself, and to the cat he said,
suddenly:--

'Right--I'll do it. What's the word, again?'

'----,' said the cat.

'----,' said Maurice; and suddenly the table shot up to the height of a
house, the walls to the height of tenement buildings, the pattern on the
carpet became enormous, and Maurice found himself on all fours. He tried
to stand up on his feet, but his shoulders were oddly heavy. He could
only rear himself upright for a moment, and then fell heavily on his
hands. He looked down at them; they seemed to have grown shorter and
fatter, and were encased in black fur gloves. He felt a desire to walk
on all fours--tried it--did it. It was very odd--the movement of the
arms straight from the shoulder, more like the movement of the piston of
an engine than anything Maurice could think of at that moment.

'I am asleep,' said Maurice--'I am dreaming this. I am dreaming I am a
cat. I hope I dreamed that about the sardine-tin and Lord Hugh's tail,
and Dr. Strong's.'

'You didn't,' said a voice he knew and yet didn't know, 'and you aren't
dreaming this.'

'Yes, I am,' said Maurice; 'and now I'm going to dream that I fight that
beastly black cat, and give him the best licking he ever had in his
life. Come on, Lord Hugh.'

A loud laugh answered him.

'Excuse my smiling,' said the voice he knew and didn't know, 'but don't
you see--you _are_ Lord Hugh!'

A great hand picked Maurice up from the floor and held him in the air.
He felt the position to be not only undignified but unsafe, and gave
himself a shake of mingled relief and resentment when the hand set him
down on the inky table-cloth.

'You are Lord Hugh now, my dear Maurice,' said the voice, and a huge
face came quite close to his. It was his own face, as it would have
seemed through a magnifying glass. And the voice--oh, horror!--the
voice was his own voice--Maurice Basingstoke's voice. Maurice shrank
from the voice, and he would have liked to claw t