'Well,' said the baronet laughing, as he returned to the drawing-room, 'two such gourmands in one four-and-twenty hours is one too many sure enough. Here's a tiger come amongst us to-day by way of avant-courier to Uncle Geoffrey.'
'A tiger!' cried both the boys. 'Oh, where, father? But you are joking?'
'No; 'tis a plain fact, according to Denton,' said Sir William, whose information he then gave, and added: 'Though I have no apprehension of the animal coming here I must beg you all to move upstairs, and keep in the house till it is secured.'
'Secured; how can that be? it must be shot,' said William, adding: 'Pray don't let Fred and me go upstairs with the misses, father. We can load a gun, and take aim now as well as we shall do at five-and-twenty.'
'Pray let us go, father,' said Frederick; 'it would be such a thing for me to say in India that I had shot a tiger in England.'
'But,' said Mr. Stanhope, 'do you not think it would be better if the poor creature's life could be preserved? Its death must be a great loss to its owner, and life is, no doubt, happiness to the creature itself. Why terminate the existence of any animal by which we are not annoyed, and which is not necessary to our subsistence? We certainly have no right to do so.'
'Then you would not even kill a moth, Mr. Stanhope?' said Julia.
'No, that he would not, I dare say,' said Agnes; 'dear little silver-wings. Mr. Stanhope knows that clippings of Russia leather and cedar-shavings will keep the little creatures off our shawls and muffs, and why should not the pretty things live and be happy?'
'Are you the patroness of the spiders too, little girl?' said William.
'I would put one out of my room,' said Agnes, 'if I found one there, but certainly I would not kill it, for you know it does me no harm, and surely it was intended that spiders should have some place to live in, or they would not have been made.'