She shook her skirts so that the half-dozen clinging children rattled like a bunch of keys, pushed her jet bonnet back from the shiny wrinkled forehead, and waited, her motherly heart aquake in spite of her drastic language.
Jan Cuxson was standing in front of the lions' cage at one end of the lion-house, talking to his old friend the keeper, under the impression that Leonie was close beside him; but she, having taken advantage of their conversation and a practically empty house, had slipped quietly away, climbed the barrier near the far window, and was also holding conversation—with a tiger from Bengal.
The animal lay outstretched with his wonderful head close to the bars, and his unblinking opalescent gold-flecked eyes staring straight into the opalescent gold-flecked eyes of the child as she stood on tip-toe so that her face was almost on a level with that of the animal.
"Poor tiger!" she was saying. "I'm vewwy sowwy for you—I'm sure you're not so vewy, vewy wicked, an' if you will bend your head I will stwoke you behind the ear same as I did Kitty."
Mrs. Henry Higgins gasped.
Holding on to one bar tightly just near the tiger's mouth so as to steady herself, Leonie stretched, and thrusting her hand inside began to rub the tiger's head quite forcibly behind the ear.
"Nice?" she inquired as the animal closed its eyes under the unexpected and unexperienced caress, then opening them lifted the beautiful head and yawned to the full capacity of the huge mouth, affording Leonie a front row view of the splendid ivories and pale pink tongue.
"Oh—h—h!" said she admiringly, standing flat and patting the nearest paw. "I do like you though you do fwighten me when you walk so softly in my dweams—oh—h—h!"
She shivered with ecstasy as the tiger rolled on its back, displaying its soft white belly as it bit its hind foot with the abandon of a baby, then turned on its side, and leaping sideways to its feet, slunk off to the far corner of the miserable den, which is all a civilised country gives a wild animal in exchange for its jungle home.
Meanwhile the Higgins brood, like hungry sparrows on a rail, were sitting open-mouthed on the lower steps provided for the benefit of those spectators who wish to revel with safety in the degrading sight of the royal beasts fed with lumps of bleeding meat pushed through the lower bar on the end of a prong.