I ought to say that I had not as yet tried speaking to any animal, even to the cat when she scratched me, but I thought I would try it now. So when she came in at dinner-time and circled about, with what I may call pious aspirations about fish and other such things, I summoned up my courage and said (using my voice in the way I described, or rather did not describe, before): "I used to be told, 'If you are hungry, you can eat dry bread.'" She was certainly horribly startled. At first I thought she would have dashed up the chimney or out of the window; but she recovered pretty quickly and sat down, still looking at me with intense surprise. "I suppose I might have guessed," she said; "but dear! what a turn you did give me! I feel quite faint; and gracious! what a day it has been! When I found you dozing off like a great---- Well, no one wants to be rude, do they? but I can tell you I had more than half a mind to go at your face." "I am glad you didn't," I said; "and really, you know, it wasn't my fault: it was that stuff they were burning on the path." "I know that well enough," she said; "but to come back to the point, all this anxiety has made me as empty in myself as a clean saucer." "Just what I was saying; if you are hungry, you can----" "Say that again, say it just once more," she said, and her eyes grew narrow as she said it, "and I shall----" "What shall you do?" I asked, for she stopped suddenly. She calmed herself. "Oh, you know how it is when one's been all excited-like and worked up; we all say more than we mean. But that about dry bread! Well, there! I simply can't bear it. It's a wicked, cruel untruth, that's what it is; and besides, you _can't_ be going to eat all the whole of what she's put down for you." Excitement was coming on again, and she ended with a loud ill-tempered mew. Well, I gave her what she seemed to want, and shortly after, worn out doubtless with the fatigues of the day, she went to sleep on a chair, not even caring to follow the maid downstairs when things were cleared away. VI THE CAT, WAG, SLIM AND OTHERS I got out my precious casket. I sat by the window and watched. The moon shone out, the lid of the box loosened in due course, and I touched my forehead with the ointment. But neither at once nor for some little time after did I notice any fresh power coming to me. With the moon, up came also the little town, and no sooner were the doors of the houses level with the grass than the boys were out of them and running in some numbers towards my window; in fact, some slipped out of their own windows, not waiting for the doors to be available. Wag was the first. Slim, more sedate, came among the crowd that followed. These were still the only two who felt no hesitation about talking to me. The others were all fully occupied in exploring the room. "To-morrow," I said (after some sort of how-do-you-do's had been exchanged), "you'll be flying all over the place, I suppose."