India -- History -- Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-1858 -- Fiction
“It would have frightened any decent minded tiger, Miss Hannay, instead
of attracting it; for such dismal yells as that woman made I never
listened to. I nearly tumbled off the tree at the first of them, it made
me jump so, and it gave me a feeling of cold water running down my back.
As to the child, I don’t know whether she pinched it or the doctor stuck
pins into it, but the poor little brute howled in the most frightful
way. I don’t think I shall ever want to go tiger shooting in the dark
again; I ache all over today as if I had been playing in the first
football match of the season, from sitting balancing myself on that
branch; I was almost over half a dozen times.”
“I expect you nearly went off to sleep, Mr. Wilson.”
“I think I should have gone to sleep if it hadn’t been for that woman,
Miss Hannay. I should not have minded if I could have smoked, but to
sit there hour after hour and not be able to smoke, and not allowed to
speak, and staring all the time into the darkness till your eyes ached,
was trying, I can tell you; and after all that, not to hit the brute was
too bad.”
The days passed quietly at Deennugghur. They were seldom alone at Major
Hannay’s bungalow in the evening, for Wilson and Richards generally came
in to smoke a cigar in the veranda; the Doctor was a regular visitor,
when he was not away in pursuit of game, and Bathurst was also often one
of the party.
“Mr. Bathurst is coming out wonderfully, Miss Hannay,” Mrs. Hunter
said one day, as Isobel sat working with her, while the two girls were
practicing duets on a piano in the next room. “We used to call him
the hermit, he was so difficult to get out of his cell. We were quite
surprised when he accepted our invitation to dinner yesterday.”
“I think Dr. Wade has stirred him up,” Isobel said calmly; “he is a
great favorite of the Doctor’s.”
Mrs. Hunter smiled over her work. “Perhaps so, my dear; anyhow, I am
glad he has come out, and I hope he won’t retire into his cell again
after you have all gone.”
“I suppose it depends a good deal upon his work,” Isobel said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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