The Magic World

BY E. NESBIT AUTHOR OF ‘THE TREASURE SEEKERS,’ ‘THE WONDERFUL GARDEN,’
‘THE MAGIC CITY,’ ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS by H. R. MILLAR and SPENCER PRYSE
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1924
To have your hair cut is not painful, nor does it hurt to have your whiskers trimmed. But round wooden shoes, shaped like bowls, are not comfortable wear, however much it may amuse the onlooker to see you try to walk in them. If you have a nice fur coat like a company promoter’s, it is most annoying to be made to swim in it. And if you had a tail, surely it would be solely your own affair; that any one should tie a tin can to it would strike you as an unwarrantable impertinence—to say the least.
But the empty sardine-tin attached to Lord Hugh’s tail and hind legs—this had a voice, and, rattling against stairs, banisters, and the legs of stricken furniture, it cried aloud for vengeance. Lord Hugh, suffering violently, added his voice, and this time the family heard. There was a chase, a chorus of ‘Poor pussy!’ and ‘Pussy, then!’ and the tail and the tin and Lord Hugh were caught under Jane’s bed. The tail and the tin acquiesced in their rescue. Lord Hugh did not. He fought, scratched, and bit. Jane carried the scars of that rescue for many a long week.
When all was calm Maurice was sought and, after some little natural delay, found—in the boot-cupboard.
‘Oh, Maurice!’ his mother almost sobbed, ‘how can you? What will your father say?’
Maurice thought he knew what his father would do.
‘I didn’t mean to be cruel,’ Maurice said. And, what is more, he spoke the truth. All the unwelcome attentions he had showered on Lord Hugh had not been exactly intended to hurt that stout veteran—only it was interesting to see what a cat would do if you threw it in the water, or cut its whiskers, or tied things to its tail.
‘Oh, but you must have meant to be cruel,’ said mother, ‘and you will have to be punished.’
‘I wish I hadn’t,’ said Maurice, from the heart.