Fairy Tales for Young Readers by E. Nesbit Page B

And there sat the ogre, as big as he was ugly, and as ugly as he was wicked.
    â€œWhat do you want?” he asked the cat fiercely; and his mind was quite made up that, whatever the cat wanted, what the cat should get would be the end of a rope.
    â€œOnly to see you, ”said the cat humbly; “and now I have seen you I can die contented.”
    â€œI’m not much to look at,” said the ogre, but he was pleased all the same.
    â€œLooks are not everything,” said the cat, “though even in looks you are the finest ogre in all Brittany. I have travelled all over the world, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Island of Sark, and everywhere I have heard of nothing but your beauty, your wit, your wealth, and your accomplishments.”
    â€œWell,” said the ogre, scratching his head, “you’ve got a tongue. Wet it with a cup of wine, and sit down and have a turnover or a girdle-cake.”
    â€œI’ll sit down with pleasure,” said Michau, “but I won’t eat, thank you, because I’ve just had breakfast with the King, who owns the next-door kingdom to yours, and his lovely daughter, Princess Dulcibella.”
    â€œOh,” said the ogre, “and did they talk about me too?”
    â€œI should think they did,” said the cat. “They told me all I have told you, and more. Why, they said you had the power of changing yourself into any animal you chose; but of course, I’m not so mouse-minded as to believe that. ”
    â€œOh, aren’t you,” said the ogre. “Well, then, look here.” He stood up, took off his cloak, and said:
    â€œI shall now change myself into a lion. No deception, ladies and gentlemen. You shall see for yourselves how it’s done!”
    He uttered a roar so loud that the other lions might almost have heard it in their distant deserts, and then and there became a lion. Michau was off through the windowbefore the echo of the roar had died away. He landed on the sloping kitchen roof, but his boots made it very difficult to hold on to it, so he slid off, clattering on to the roof of the washhouse, and from that to the roof of the oven, and from that to the stones of the yard. And from the yard he ran in and upstairs, and peeped into the ogre’s hall. The lion was gone, and only the ogre sat there, laughing all by himself at the fright he had given his visitor.
    â€œExcuse my having left you for a moment,” said the cat, walking in as though nothing had happened. “I thought I heard my master, the Marquis of Carabas, calling me. But it was only the well-handle creaking.”
    â€œYou know well enough,” said the ogre, “that you were frightened because I turned into a lion.”
    Michau smiled with polite amusement.
    â€œOh, not at all, I assure you,” he said. “Why, that’s such a common trick, if you’ll pardon my saying so. Almost every one I know can do that. What the King was saying was that you could turn yourself into quite little things—a fly, or a beetle, or a mouse; and of course I’m not so bat-witted as to believe that.”
    â€œOh, you aren’t, aren’t you?” said the ogre. “You just look here!” And with a squeak of triumph he turned himself into a mouse.
    â€œWeet, weet!” said the ogre-mouse, frisking about under Michau’s nose.
    â€œ Miaow! ”said Michau, and pinned the ogre-mouse to the leg of the ogre’s chair. There was no more ogre then; only a dead mouse, which Michau scorned to eat.
    So that when the King and the Princess and Yvo arrived at the front door of the castle the cat had already been round to all the servants, explaining to them, as he had done to the reapers, that everything really belonged to the Marquis of Carabas; and the King was met by rows of bowing retainers, and by Michau, who came to meet the coach, saying:
    â€œWelcome, your Majesty, to the halls of the most noble the Marquis of