"I know that one," said Phra eagerly.
"I've seen it once," said Harry. "Old Sree would get you one."
"I've asked him, but he has not succeeded yet," said the doctor.
"We'll try, then," said Phra, springing up, an action followed by
Harry.
"But the fireflies are best caught by night," said Mr. Kenyon drily.
"Of course," cried Phra, reddening through his yellowish bronze skin, and he dropped back in his chair, with Harry following suit.
But in spite of the heat, the boys could not sit still, and began fidgeting about, while Mr. Kenyon and his friend chatted about the state of the colony.
For want of something else more in accordance with their desires at the moment, the two boys began to go over the various objects in the large, high-ceiled room, which were the result of ten years' collecting. There were bird-skins by the hundred—pheasants with the wondrously-shaped eyes upon tail and wing, which had won for them the name argus; others eye-bearing like the peacock, but on a smaller scale; and then the great peacock itself—the Javanese kind—gorgeous in golden green where the Indian kinds were of peacock blue.
Every here and there hung snake-skins, trophies of the jungle, while upon the floor were no less than six magnificent tiger-pelts, each of which had its history, and a black one too, of murder committed upon the body of some defenceless native.
Leopard-skins, too, were well represented. Elephants' tusks of the whitest ivory; and one strange-looking object stood on the floor, resembling a badly rounded tub about twenty inches in diameter, and formed out of the foot of some huge elephant.