Tylô kept watching the Cat from the other end of the room:
"Now that she's standing on her hind-legs like a man," he muttered, "she looks just like the Devil, with her pointed ears, her long tail and her dress as black as ink!" And he could not help growling between his teeth. "She's also like the village chimney-sweep," he went on, "whom I loathe and detest and whom I shall never take for a real man, whatever my little gods may say.... It's lucky," he added, with a sigh, "that I know more about a good many things than they do!"
But suddenly, no longer able to master himself, he flew at the Cat and shouted, with a loud laugh that was more like a roar:
"I'm going to frighten Tylette! Bow, wow, wow!"
But the Cat, who was dignified even when still an animal, now thought herself called to the loftiest destinies. She considered that the time had come to raise a tall barrier between herself and the Dog, who had never been more than an ill-bred person in her eyes; and, stepping back in disdain, she just said:
"Sir, I don't know you."
Tylô gave a bound under the insult, whereupon the Cat bristled up, twisting her whiskers under her little pink nose (for she was very proud of those two pale blotches which gave a special touch to her dark beauty); and then, arching her back and sticking up her tail, she hissed out, "Fft! Fft!" and stood stock-still on the chest of drawers, like a dragon on the lid of a Chinese vase.
Tyltyl and Mytyl screamed with laughter; but the quarrel would certainly have had a bad ending if, at that moment, a great thing had not happened. At eleven o'clock in the evening, in the middle of that winter's night, a great light, the light of the noon-day sun, glowing and dazzling, burst into the cottage.
"Hullo, there's daylight!" said the little boy, who no longer knew what to make of things. "What will Daddy say?"
But, before the Fairy had time to set him right, Tyltyl understood; and, full of wonderment, he knelt before the latest vision that bewitched his eyes.