]

‘Oh, dear,’ sighed Maurice the cat. ‘I never knew what people meant by “afraid” before.’

His cat-heart was beating heavily against [p14]  his furry side. His limbs were getting cramped—he must move. He did. And instantly the awful thing happened. The sardine-tin touched the iron of the bed-foot. It rattled.

[p

14

]  

‘Oh, I can’t bear it, I can’t,’ cried poor Maurice, in a heartrending meaow that echoed through the house. He leaped from the bed and tore through the door and down the stairs, and behind him came the most terrible thing in the world. People might call it a sardine-tin, but he knew better. It was the soul of all the fear that ever had been or ever could be. It rattled.

Maurice who was a cat flew down the stairs; down, down—the rattling horror followed. Oh, horrible! Down, down! At the foot of the stairs the horror, caught by something—a banister—a stair-rod—stopped. The string on Maurice’s tail tightened, his tail was jerked, he was stopped. But the noise had stopped too. Maurice lay only just alive at the foot of the stairs.

It was Mabel who untied the string and soothed his terrors with strokings and tender love-words. Maurice was surprised to find what a nice little girl his sister really was.

‘I’ll never tease you again,’ he tried to say, softly—but that was not what he said. What he said was ‘Purrrr.’

[opp p14]It was Mabel who untied the string and soothed his terrors.

[

opp p14

]

[p15]‘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.

[p

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