Leonie of the Jungle | Page 5

carry on here when I have crossed the threshold and found the solutions
to my problems on the other side. Though I'm sure I don't know why
I'm telling you all this," he finished brusquely, "we will return to India."
"Yes! India is very, very interesting!" piped Lady Hetth, rising and
standing on one foot so as to rest the other suffering from an oversmall
shoe.
"Very, very interesting!" she continued unctuously and with the
enthusiasm she reserved as a rule for the S.P.C.K.I, which letters stand
for an attempt to graft a new creed on to the tree of religion in India
which was bearing fruit at a period when we were hobnobbing in caves,
with a boulder or good stout club as reasons for existence.
"I'll write and tell you when to send the child and her nurse, and

between us we'll manage to keep her amused. And in the meantime
stop all lessons and let her do exactly as she likes, and feed her up,
Mam, feed her up, her bones are simply coming through her skin."
Again he laughed a great rumbling laugh, as lifting the child from the
ground he felt the little hands in his mane of white hair.
"You're nice," she decided, "vewy nice."
"Like to come and stay with me?"
"Oh, yes! if you won't--won't make me----!"
She stopped short.
"Well! what--won't make you what?"
"Nothing--Auntie pulled my dwess!"
The door closed softly.
CHAPTER IV
"The kindest man, The best conditioned and unwearied spirit In doing
courtesies."--Shakespeare.
They met on the threshold.
Swinging back the door to let Leonie and her aunt out, Ellen, the
middle-aged maid, almost an heirloom in the family of Cuxson,
bristling in starched cap and apron, let in the erstwhile plague of her
life, but now as ever the light of her eyes, Jonathan Cuxson, Junior.
He took Lady Hetth's hand in a mighty and painful grip when after a
moment's hesitation she introduced herself.
"Why, of course! You must be Jan! Except for being bigger you haven't
changed a bit since I saw you years ago one Speech Day at Harrow!"
She looked with open admiration at the very personable young man

before her who loomed large in the hall with his height of six feet two
and a tremendous width of shoulder. His eyes were grey, and as honest
as a genuine fine day; the jaw was just saved from a shadow of
brutality in its strength by a remarkably fine mouth; the ears were
splendid from an intellectual point of view, and the set of the head on
the neck, and the neck on the shoulders, perfect. The nose was a good
nose, rather broad at the top, with those delicate sensitive nostrils
which usually spell trouble for the owner.
"I don't believe you remember me!"
Happily the reply which must have been untrue or given in the negative
was averted by the hilarious arrival of a puppy.
Having heard the deep voice associated in its canine mind with bits of
cake and joyous roughs-and-tumbles, it had forsaken the happy though
forbidden hunting ground of the upper storeys and negotiated the stairs
in a series of bumps and misses.
Arrived in the hall it hurled itself blindly against Leonie's ankles, and
ricocheted on to its master's boots, where it essayed a pas seul on its
hind legs in its efforts to reach the strong brown hand.
"Oh!" said Leonie, as she fell on her knees with her arms outstretched
to the rampaging ball of white fluff and high spirits, the which thinking
it some new game squatted back on its hind legs with the front ones
wide apart, gave an infantile squeak, and whizzed round three times
apparently for luck, as tears welled up in the child's large eyes and
trickled down the white face.
"Hello, kiddie! You're crying!" said Jan Cuxson, who like his father
had a positive mania for protecting and helping those in trouble, which
mania got him into an infinite and varied amount of trouble himself,
and led him into unexpected boles and corners of the earth. "I'm--I'm
not crying weally!" choked Leonie, "it's--it's my kitten!"
"Oh! do stop, Leonie!" said her aunt, leaning down to catch the child's
hand and pull her to her feet. "She's coming to stay with you," she

added, as Leonie stood quite still with that piteous jerk of the chin
which comes from suppressed and overwhelming grief, as she watched
the puppy play a one-sided game of bumblefoot in a corner.
"That's jolly," said the young man.
"Oh! she's coming as a case. She walks a good deal in her sleep, and as
my brother-in-law, Colonel Hetth, if you remember, was such a----"
But Jan Cuxson was not listening.
He too had put his hand on the