]

‘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:—

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.’

[opp p21]When Jane went in to put Mabel’s light out Maurice crept in too.

[

opp p21

]

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 [p21room 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.

[p

21

 

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.

 Prev. P 15/178 next