‘Well, I suppose it’s Pax for the future,’ [p24 said Lord Hugh; ‘if you won’t come out, you won’t. Please leave off being a cat and be Maurice again.’
And instantly Maurice, amid a heap of goloshes and old tennis bats, felt with a swelling heart that he was no longer a cat. No more of those undignified four legs, those tiresome pointed ears, so difficult to wash, that furry coat, that contemptible tail, and that terrible inability to express all one’s feelings in two words—‘mew’ and ‘purr.’
He scrambled out of the cupboard, and the boots and goloshes fell off him like spray off a bather.
He stood upright in those very chequered knickerbockers that were so terrible when their knees held one vice-like, while things were tied to one’s tail. He was face to face with another boy, exactly like himself.
‘You haven’t changed, then—but there can’t be two Maurices.’
‘There sha’n’t be; not if I know it,’ said the other boy; ‘a boy’s life’s a dog’s life. Quick, before any one comes.’
‘Quick what?’ asked Maurice.
‘Why tell me to leave off being a boy, and to be Lord Hugh Cecil again.’
Maurice told him at once. And at once the boy was gone, and there was Lord Hugh in [p25 his own shape, purring politely, yet with a watchful eye on Maurice’s movements.
‘Oh, you needn’t be afraid, old chap. It’s Pax right enough,’ Maurice murmured in the ear of Lord Hugh. And Lord Hugh, arching his back under Maurice’s stroking hand, replied with a purrrr-meaow that spoke volumes.