“That is too bad of him, Miss Hannay,” Wilson laughed; “we were not such duffers as all that. I don't believe he really did think so.”
“I am sure he was in earnest, Mr. Wilson. He said he should have felt quite safe if it had been daylight, but that in the dark people really can't see which way the rifles are pointed, and that he remembered he had not told you to put phosphorus on the sights.”
“It was too bad of him,” Wilson grumbled; “it would have served him right if one of the bullets had hit a timber of the cage and given him a start; I should like to have seen the Doctor struggling in the dark to get his second rifle from under the woman, with the tiger clawing and growling two feet above him.”
“The Doctor didn't tell me about that,” Isobel laughed; “though he said he had a woman and child with him to attract the tiger.”
“It would have frightened any decent minded tiger, Miss Hannay, instead of attracting it; for such dismal yells as that woman made I never listened to. I nearly tumbled off the tree at the first of them, it made me jump so, and it gave me a feeling of cold water running down my back. As to the child, I don't know whether she pinched it or the doctor stuck pins into it, but the poor little brute howled in the most frightful way. I don't think I shall ever want to go tiger shooting in the dark again; I ache all over today as if I had been playing in the first football match of the season, from sitting balancing myself on that branch; I was almost over half a dozen times.”
“I expect you nearly went off to sleep, Mr. Wilson.”
“I think I should have gone to sleep if it hadn't been for that woman, Miss Hannay. I should not have minded if I could have smoked, but to sit there hour after hour and not be able to smoke, and not allowed to speak, and staring all the time into the darkness till your eyes ached, was trying, I can tell you; and after all that, not to hit the brute was too bad.”
The days passed quietly at Deennugghur. They were seldom alone at Major Hannay's bungalow in the evening, for Wilson and Richards generally came in to smoke a cigar in the veranda; the Doctor was a regular visitor, when he was not away in pursuit of game, and Bathurst was also often one of the party.
“Mr. Bathurst is coming out wonderfully, Miss Hannay,” Mrs. Hunter said one day, as Isobel sat working with her, while the two girls were practicing duets on a piano in the next room. “We used to call him the hermit, he was so difficult to get out of his cell. We were quite surprised when he accepted our invitation to dinner yesterday.”
“I think Dr. Wade has stirred him up,” Isobel said calmly; “he is a great favorite of the Doctor's.”