My jaw dropped, and I thought I should have slid under the table.  Good heavens!  It was that beast Beauty who was to go for a holiday, while I was to act as the infernal fiend’s keeper!  O my prophetic soul—­my aunt!  But there was no help for it; I was bound in bonds of gold.

On the following day, Beauty and I were duly driven to the station, the former being luxuriously nested in a small hamper specially furnished for the occasion.  About half-way on the road, just as we had mounted a long, steep hill, the cat managed to roll his residence from the stern of the dog-cart and trundle himself half-way home again.  Luckily, he screeched blue murder at the tip-top of his voice, or we might not have missed the beast.  As it was, his cyclical retrogression made us just too late for the train, and we had to wait two hours for the next.  So I seated myself on the hamper—­like Patience on the proverbial monument—­and beheld the coachman depart homewards, with a sympathetic hat-touching salute, leaving me with a gloomy conviction of coming misfortune.  The train, when it did arrive, was tolerably empty, and I secured a vacant first-class.  For a time all went happily; then the cat commenced groaning.

[Illustration:  SEATED MYSELF ON THE HAMPER.]

My aunt having solemnly ordered me to give the brute dinner, I now prepared to stop his mouth with cold chicken.  While I was cautiously unfastening the hamper lid, Beauty remained quiet as a dormouse; and then he proceeded personally to assist the unfastening, with a vengeance.  There was a bouncing volcanic eruption, a blood-curdling howl, a mixed-up whirling round the carriage, and then—­smash!—­bang through the window went Beauty!—­leaving me doubled up on the seat, holding out half a chicken.  It was a forty-feline-power hurricane, while it lasted; and drops of perspiration trickled down my nose on to the chicken, at which I sat stupidly staring.  After a dazed pause I staggered to the broken window and looked out.  There was Beauty, with a perpendicular tail like a young fir-tree, going like great guns in exactly the wrong direction.  We had just come through a long tunnel, and the last I saw of my aunt’s pet demon was as he dived headlong into its Hades-like mouth.  And I had to take home first prize for him from the Grand All-England Cat Show!

[Illustration:  LEAVING THE RAILWAY CARRIAGE.]

[Illustration:  INTO ITS HADES-LIKE MOUTH.]

[Illustration:  INCIPIENT CATALEPSY.]

When the 4.40 down express arrived at Muddiford-on-the-Ooze station, an auburn-haired youth limply emerged from a first-class carriage.  In his arms he bore a basket, and his grey-green eyes gleamed with incipient catalepsy.  Yes, such would undoubtedly have been my description had I posed as the momentary hero of a penny novelette.  I forgot all about my luggage, imbecilely clinging to the late habitation of the lost beast Beauty, wandering I knew not why nor whither.