They left accordingly; whereupon Fakrash took the cup--an ordinary breakfast cup with a Greek key-border pattern in pale blue round the top--and, drenching the mule with the contents, exclaimed, "Quit this form and return to the form in which thou wast!" For a dreadful moment or two it seemed as if no effect was to be produced; the animal simply stood and shivered, and Ventimore began to feel an agonising suspicion that the Jinnee really had, as he had first asserted, forgotten how to perform this particular incantation. All at once the mule reared, and began to beat the air frantically with his fore-hoofs; after which he fell heavily backward into the nearest armchair (which was, fortunately, a solid and capacious piece of furniture) with his fore-legs hanging limply at his side, in a semi-human fashion. There was a brief convulsion, and then, by some gradual process unspeakably impressive to witness, the man seemed to break through the mule, the mule became merged in the man--and Professor Futvoye, restored to his own natural form and habit, sat gasping and trembling in the chair before them. CHAPTER XIV "SINCE THERE'S NO HELP, COME, LET US KISS AND PART!" As soon as the Professor seemed to have regained his faculties, Horace opened the door and called in Sylvia and her mother, who were, as was only to be expected, overcome with joy on seeing the head of the family released from his ignoble condition of a singularly ill-favoured quadruped. "There, there," said the Professor, as he submitted to their embraces and incoherent congratulations, "it's nothing to make a fuss about. I'm quite myself again, as you can see. And," he added, with an unreasonable outburst of ill-temper, "if one of you had only had the common sense to think of such a simple remedy as sprinkling a little cold water over me when I was first taken like that, I should have been spared a great deal of unnecessary inconvenience. But that's always the way with women--lose their heads the moment anything goes wrong! If I had not kept perfectly cool myself--" "It was very, very stupid of us not to think of it, papa," said Sylvia, tactfully ignoring the fact that there was scarcely an undamaged article in the room; "still, you know, if _we_ had thrown the water it mightn't have had the same effect." "I'm not in a condition to argue now," said her father; "you didn't trouble to try it, and there's no more to be said." "No more to be said!" exclaimed Fakrash. "O thou monster of ingratitude, hast thou no thanks for him who hath delivered thee from thy predicament?"