Mrs. Dermot smiled.
"You would be even less so if you knew his story," she said. "He is my husband's private property now. The Government of India presented him to Kevin. Now come back to the house and have tea. Oh, no, after your long ride you'll prefer a whiskey and soda."
"I'd really rather have the tea, I think, Mrs. Dermot. I don't feel thirsty up in this deliciously cool air. It's awful down in the Plains now. But what about my elephants and baggage?"
"Tell the mahouts to go to the Mess. You are to have a room there."
Frank did so; and the two animals lumbered away up the hill after the mahouts had brought the Colonel's guns into the bungalow.
Mrs. Dermot led the way into the house. The little boy had possessed himself of Wargrave's free hand, the other one being engaged in holding Eileen, who was perched on the subaltern's shoulder. Mrs. Dermot found it difficult to separate the children from their new friend when at last she bore them off to bed.
Left to himself, Frank examined with deep interest and admiring envy the splendid display of Colonel Dermot's trophies of big game shooting that filled the bungalow. From the walls many heads of bison and buffalo, of sambhur and barasingh, those fine Indian stags, looked mildly at him with their glass eyes; while tigers, bears and panthers snarled at him from the ground. Long elephant-tusks leaned in corners, smoking and liqueur-tables made up from the mammoths' legs and feet stood about, and crossed from ceiling to floor; on the walls were the skins of enormous snakes such as Frank had never seen or imagined. He had thought a six-foot cobra or an eight-foot python long—here were reptiles sixteen or eighteen feet in length, and he hoped that he would never meet their equals alive in the jungle.
While he was gazing with admiration at the fine collection of trophies Mrs. Dermot returned.
"What a magnificent lot of heads and skins you've got here!" he exclaimed. "All your husband's, I suppose?"
She laughed as she glanced round the room, while pouring out the tea that her butler had brought.