The Adventures of Kathlyn

The living-room of the bungalow was large and comfortable. The walls

were adorned with the heads of wild beasts and their great furry hides

shared honors with the Persian rugs on the floor. Hare was a man who

would pack up at a moment's notice and go to the far ends of the world

to find a perfect black panther, a cheetah with a litter, or a great

horned rhinoceros. He was tall and broad, and amazingly active, for

all that his hair and mustache were almost white. For thirty years or

more he had gone about the hazardous enterprise of supplying zoological

gardens and circuses with wild beasts. He was known from Hamburg to

Singapore, from Mombassa to Rio Janeiro. The Numidian lion, the Rajput

tiger, and the Malayan panther had cause to fear Hare Sahib. He was

even now preparing to return to Ceylon for an elephant hunt.

The two daughters went over to the tea tabouret, where a matronly maid

was busying with the service. The fragrant odor of tea permeated the

room. Hare paused at his desk. Lines suddenly appeared on his bronzed

face. He gazed for a space at the calendar. The day was the fifteenth

of July. Should he go back there, or should he give up the expedition?

He might never return. India and the border countries! What a land,

full of beauty and romance and terror and squalor, at once barbaric and

civilized! He loved it and hated it, and sometimes feared it, he who

had faced on foot many a wounded tiger.

He shrugged, reached into the desk for a box of Jaipur brass enamel and

took from it a medal attached to a ribbon. The golden disk was

encrusted with uncut rubies and emeralds.

"Girls," he called. "Come here a moment. Martha, that will be all,"

with a nod toward the door. "I never showed you this before."

"Goodness gracious!" cried Winnie, reaching out her hand.

"Why, it looks like a decoration, father," said Kathlyn. "What lovely

stones! It would make a beautiful pendant."

"Vanity, vanity, all is vanity," said the colonel, smiling down into

their charming faces. "Do you love your old dad?"

"Love you!" they exclaimed in unison, indignantly, too, since the

question was an imputation of the fact.

"Would you be lonesome if I took the Big Trek?" whimsically.

"Father!"

"Dad!"

They pressed about him, as vines about an oak.

"Hang it, I swear that this shall be the last hunt. I'm rich. We'll

get rid of all these brutes and spend the rest of the years seeing the

show places. I'm a bit tired myself of jungle fodder. We'll go to

Paris, and Berlin, and Rome, and Vienna. And you, Kit, shall go and

tell Rodin that you've inherited the spirit of Gerome. And you,

Winnie, shall make a stab at grand opera."