'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 the face, but he had had no practice. 'You are Lord Hugh,' the voice repeated, 'and I am Maurice. I like being Maurice. I am so large and strong. I could drown you in the water-butt, my poor cat--oh, so easily. No, don't spit and swear. It's bad manners--even in a cat.' 'Maurice!' shouted Mr. Basingstoke from between the door and the cab. Maurice, from habit, leaped towards the door. 'It's no use _your_ going,' said the thing that looked like a giant reflection of Maurice; 'it's _me_ he wants.' 'But I didn't agree to your being me.'