“I was busy – I forgot,” Cat muttered sulkily.

“Fit it into your crowded schedule soon, please,” Chrestomanci said, “or I may find myself becoming seriously irritated.”

Cat sighed, but nodded. No one disobeyed Chrestomanci when he got like this. But now he had to face the fact that Chrestomanci knew exactly how Cat was feeling and had absolutely no patience with it. Cat sighed again as he got down to his problems.

Magic Theory left him completely bewildered. His trouble was that he could, instinctively, do magic that used very advanced Magic Theory indeed, and he had no idea how he did it. Sometimes he did not even know he was doing magic. Chrestomanci said Cat must learn Theory or he might one day do something quite terrible by mistake. As far as Cat was concerned, the one thing he wanted magic to do was to solve Theory problems, and that seemed to be the one thing you couldn’t use it for.

He got six answers he knew were nonsense. Then, feeling very neglected and put-upon, he took Tonino on a tour of the castle. It was not a success. Tonino looked white and tired and timid almost the whole time, and shivered in the long cold passages and on all the dark chilly staircases. Cat could not think of anything to say except utterly obvious things like, “This is called the Small Drawing Room,” or, “This is the schoolroom – we have lessons here with Michael Saunders, but he’s away in Greenland just now,” or, “Here’s the front hall – it’s made of marble.”

The only time Tonino showed the slightest interest was when they came to the big windows that overlooked the velvety green lawn and the great cedars of the gardens. He actually hooked a knee on the windowsill to look down at it.

“My mother has told me of this,” he said, “but I never thought it would be so wet and green.”

“How does your mother know about the gardens?” Cat asked.

“She is English. She was brought up here in this castle when Gabriel de Witt, who was Chrestomanci before this one, collected many children with magic talents to be trained here,” Tonino replied.

Cat felt annoyed and somehow cheated that Tonino had a connection with the castle anyway. “Then you’re English too,” he said. It came out as if he were accusing Tonino of a crime.

“No, I am Italian,” Tonino said firmly. He added, with great pride, “I belong to the foremost spell-house in Italy.”

There did not seem to be any reply to this. Cat did think of saying, “And I’m going to be the next Chrestomanci – I’ve got nine lives, you know,” but he knew this would be silly and boastful. Tonino had not been boasting really. He had been trying to say why he did not belong in the castle. So Cat simply took Tonino back to the playroom, where Julia was only too ready to teach him card games, and mooched away, feeling he had done his duty. He tried to avoid Tonino after that. He did not like being made to feel the way Tonino made him feel.