Leonie of the Jungle

Leonie of the Jungle

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Leonie of the Jungle, by Joan
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Title: Leonie of the Jungle
Author: Joan Conquest
Release Date: May 16, 2005 [EBook #15841]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEONIE OF
THE JUNGLE ***

Produced by Al Haines

LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE
BY
JOAN CONQUEST

Author of "Desert Love"

NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

Copyright, 1921, by
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

TO
THE SPLENDID NATIVE OF INDIA,
THE LIVING
MADHU KRISHNAGHAR

[Transcriber's Note: The name "Madhu" appears throughout this book.
The "u" in it can be correctly rendered only in Unicode, as
u-macron--uppercase U+016A, lowercase U+016B.]

CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE WEST

BOOK II
THE EAST

"And never the twain shall meet."

BOOK I
THE WEST

LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE
CHAPTER I
"To deliver thee from the strange woman!"--The Bible.
"Who found the kitten?"
"Me," quavered the childish voice.
Lady Susan Hetth tchcked with her tongue against her rather prominent
teeth at the lamentable lapse in grammar, and looked crossly at Leonie,
who immediately lifted up the quavering voice and wept.
Sobs too big for such a little girl shook the slender body, whilst great
tears dripped from the long lashes to the tip of the upturned nose, down
the chin and on the knee of the famous specialist, against which she
rested.
"Stand up, Leonie, and push your hair out of your eyes!"
The thin little body tautened like an overstrung violin string, and a
shock of russet hair was pushed hastily back from a pair of indefinable

eyes, in which shone the light of an intense grief strange in one so
young.
"Leave her to me, Lady Hetth!"
The surgeon's voice was exceedingly suave but with the substratum of
steel which had served to bend other wills to his with an even greater
facility than the thumb of the potter moulds clay to his fancy.
"Leonie is going to tell me everything, and then she is going to the shop
to buy a big doll and forget all about it!"
"Please may I have a book instead of----"
"Leonie, that is very rude."
"Please, Lady Hetth. Go on, darling---what kind of book."
"'Bout tigers an' snakes, oh! an' elephants. Weal animals. Dolls, you
know"--she smiled as she confided the great secret--"aren't weal babies,
they're just full of sawdust."
He lifted the child on to his knee, frowning at the weight, and smoothed
the tangled mass of curls away from the low forehead with a touch
which caused her to make a sound 'twixt sob and sigh, and to lie back
against the broad shoulder.
It was a long and disjointed story, told in the inconsequent fashion of a
child of seven unused to converse with her elders; and continually
interrupted by the aunt, who, fretful and dying for her tea, jingled her
distracting bracelets and chains, fidgeted with the Anglo-Indian
odds-and-ends of her raiment, and disconcerted the child by the futile
verbal proddings; which are as bad for the infant mind as the criminal
attempts to force a baby to use its legs are to the infant body.
"So! and you found the dear little kitten lying quite still in the nursery
this morning?"
"Yes! Stwangled!"

"Do pronounce your _r_'s, Leonie."
The child shivered in the man's arms.
"Who told you it was strangled?"
"Auntie!"
The man's hand closed for a moment on a heavy paper-weight as he
looked across the room at the woman who was waggling her foot and
knitting her scanty brows at the sound of the rending sobs.
"Auntie was mistaken, darling. Kitty was asleep, tired out with playing
or running away from the dog next door."
Leonie shook her head. "Kitty's dead," she wailed, "lying all black and
quiet, like--like my dweams!"
There was a moment's pregnant silence, during which Leonie turned
round and snuffled into the great man's collar, and he frowned above
the russet head as he drew a block of paper and pencil towards him.
"What dreams, darling?"
"Don' know--dweams I dweam!"
The specialist sat still for a second and then laughed, the great kind
laugh of a man with a big heart who adores children.
"Let's play a game, Leonie! You tell me about the dreams, and I'll tell
you about my new motor-car, and the one who tells best will get a big
sweet!"
With a child's sudden change of mood Leonie sat up, swinging her
black