One Maid's Mischief. George Manville Fenn
the jungle.”
“I—I do not understand you, Henry,” said the chaplain, with a faint flush in his cheek.
“Not understand me, my dear fellow! Why, Perowne keeps a most ferocious creature there, and it’s loose too.”
“Loose?” cried Mrs. Doctor, excitedly.
“Oh, yes: I’ve seen it about the grounds, parading up and down on the lawn by the river, and in the house as well.”
“Gracious me, Henry, the man must be mad! What is it?” cried Mrs. Bolter.
“Regular tigress—man-eater,” said the doctor.
“And you allowed your brother-in-law to go there without warning, Henry? Really, I am surprised at you!”
“Oh! pooh, pooh!” ejaculated the doctor. “Arthur can take care of himself.”
“And here have I accepted an invitation for all of us to go there the week after next to dinner! I won’t go. I certainly will not go.”
“Nonsense, my dear Mary—nonsense!” said the doctor, with his eyes twinkling. “We must go. Perowne would be horribly put out if we did not.”
“Now look here, Henry, when I was a maiden lady I never even kept a cat or a dog, because I said to myself that live animals about a house might be unpleasant to one’s friends. So how do you suppose that when I have become a married lady I am going to sanction the presence of dangerous monsters in a house?”
“Oh, but it won’t hurt you,” said the doctor. “I tell you it’s a man-eater. We must go, Mary.”
“I certainly must beg of you not to ask me,” said the little lady. “My dear Harry, it gives me great pain to go against your wishes, but I could not—I really could not go.”
“Not if I assured you it was perfectly safe?”
“If you gave me that assurance, Henry, I—I think I would go; for I believe you would not deceive me.”
“Never,” said the doctor, emphatically. “Well, I assure you that you need not be under the slightest apprehension.”
“But is it chained up, Harry?”
“Well, no, my dear,” replied the little doctor; “they could not very well chain her up. But I was there yesterday though, and I saw that Perowne had given her a very handsome chain.”
“Then why doesn’t he chain her up? I shall certainly tell Mr. Perowne that he ought. This comes of the poor man having no wife and living out in these savage parts. Really, Henry, I don’t think we ought to go.”
“Oh! pooh, pooh—nonsense, my dear! You’ve nothing to mind. I’m not afraid of her. I’ll take care of you.”
“I know you are very good, and brave, and strong, Harry,” said the little lady, smiling, “and if you say it is safe I will go, for I do trust in your knowledge, and—there, now, I declare I am quite angry! You are laughing, sir! I’m sure there is some trick!”
“Trick? What trick?” cried the doctor, chuckling.
“Do you mean to tell me, sir, that Mr. Perowne has a wild tigress running about his place?”
“Oh, no; I never said a wild tigress—did I, Arthur?”
“I—I did not quite hear what you said, Henry,” replied the chaplain.
“You said a dangerous creature—a sort of tigress, sir.”
“Right, so I did; and so he has.”
“What is it then?” said Mrs. Doctor, very sharply.
“A handsome young woman,” chuckled the doctor—“his daughter Helen.”
“Now, Henry, I do declare that you are insufferable!” cried Mrs. Doctor, angrily, as her brother rose softly, walked to the window of the pretty palm-thatched bungalow, and stood gazing out at the bright flowers with which the doctor had surrounded his place.
“Well, it’s true enough,” chuckled the doctor. “I never saw such a girl in my life. She has had that great fellow Chumbley hanging after her for weeks, and now—”
“And now what, sir?”
Perhaps it was the wind, but certainly just then there was a sound as of a faint sigh from somewhere by the window, and it seemed as if the chaplain was recalling the past days of repose at his little home near Mayleyfield, and wondering whether he had done right to come; but no one heeded him, and the doctor went on:
“Now she seems to have lassoed young Hilton.”
“What, Captain Hilton?”
“Yes, my dear, with a silken lasso; and he is all devotion.”
“Henry, you astound me!” cried Mrs. Doctor. “Why, I thought that Mr. Harley meant something there.”
“So did I,” said the doctor, “but it seems all off. Harley and Chumbley cashiered, vice Hilton—the reigning hero of the day.”
“Of the day indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Doctor. “I never did see such a girl. It is dreadful.”
“And yet you scolded me for calling her a dangerous creature.”
“Well, I must own that she is, Henry,” said Mrs. Doctor; and once more there was a faint sigh by the window.
“She’s a regular man-trap, my dear, and practises with her eyes upon everyone she sees. I don’t think even her great-grandfather would be safe. She actually smiled at me yesterday.”
“What?” cried the little lady.
“Perowne sent for me, you know.”
“Yes, of course, I remember. Go on, Henry.”
“They’d been out together—she wanted to see the Residency island—and then nothing would do but she must have a walk in the jungle; and then, I don’t know whether she began making eyes at the leeches, but half a dozen fastened upon her, of course.”
“Why, of course, sir?”
“Because she went out walking in ridiculous high-heeled low shoes, with fancy stockings.”
“Well, Henry, how tiresomely prolix you are!”
“Well, that’s all, my dear, only that the leeches fastened on her feet and ankles.”
“And did Mr. Perowne send for you to take them off?”
“Well, not exactly, my dear, they pulled them off themselves; but one bite would not stop bleeding, and I had to apply a little pad on the instep—wonderfully pretty little ankles and insteps, my dear, when the stockings are off.”
“Doctor Bolter!” exclaimed the little lady in so severe a tone of voice that the subject of Helen Perowne was dismissed, and the culprit allowed to go to his little surgery to see to the compounding of some medicines necessary for his sick.
Volume One—Chapter Seventeen.
Doctor Bolter’s Theory.
In a little Eastern settlement, in spite of feelings of caste, the Europeans are so few that rules of society are to a certain extent set aside, so that people mix to a greater degree than in larger towns. In spite of her rather particular, and, to be truthful, rather sharp, old-maidish ways, Mrs. Bolter soon found herself heartily welcomed by all, and readily accorded, as the doctor’s wife, almost a leading position in the place.
This