"Well," the small boy said, with a fine show of being determined to play fair, "I think they look like great big, big, big cats. Did you think that?" "That's exactly what I should have said. They really are a sort of cat, you know. Did you ever see a keeper stir them up?" "Oh, yes, sir; and they snarled like anything, and licked their lips just like this!" He gave a highly gratifying imitation, and then added vivaciously: "If I were the keeper, I'd keep stirring them up all the time. They did look so mad!" "And they opened and shut their eyes slowly," I suggested, "as if they'd like to get hold of their keeper." "Yes; and their eyes were just like green fire." "'Burning bright,'" I quoted; and then without giving the boy time to suspect that he was being led on, I asked at once: "Did you ever see a cat's eyes in the dark?" "Oh, I saw our cat once last summer, when we were in the country, under a rosebush after dark, when Dick and I got out of the window after we'd gone to bed. She just scared me; her eyes were just like little green lanterns. Dick said they were like little bicycle lamps." "If it had been a tiger under a bush in the night,—'in the forests of the night,'—" "Oh," interrupted the boy with the eagerness of a discoverer, "is that what it means! Did he see a tiger in the night under a bush? A real, truly tiger, all loose? I'd have run away." "I don't know if he ever saw one," I answered. "I rather think he saw a tiger or a picture of one, or thought of one, and then got to thinking how it must seem to come across one in the woods; when one was travelling, say, in the East where tigers live wild. If you came upon one in the forest in the dark, what do you think would be the first thing that would tell you a tiger was near?" "I'd hear him." "Did you ever hear a cat moving about?" "No," the boy said doubtfully. "Aunt Katie says Spot doesn't make any more noise than a sunbeam. Could a sunbeam make a noise?" "She meant that Spot didn't make any. You'd never hear a tiger coming, for it's a kind of cat, and moves without sound. You wouldn't know that way." "I'd see him." "In the night? You couldn't see him." "Yes, I could! Yes, I could!" he cried triumphantly. "I'd see his eyes just like green fire." I had interested the lad and taken him far enough to feel sure he would follow me if I helped him on a little faster. I was ready to use clear suggestion when I felt that he would respond to it as if the thought were his own. "Well," I said, "don't you see that this is just what the man who wrote the poem meant? He got to thinking how the tiger would look in the night to anybody that came on him in the forest and saw those eyes like green fires shining at him out of the jungle. Don't you suppose you or I would think they were pretty big fires if we saw them, and knew there was a tiger behind them?" "I guess we should! Wooh! Do you suppose Bruno'd run?"