Leonie of the Jungle | Page 7

Lady Hetth. And keep her out of doors as much as possible. Why don't you take her to the Zoo this afternoon?"
"I couldn't possibly!" came the prompt and irritable reply.
"What about me!" interrupted Jan Cuxson. "Eh! kiddie? You and I riding big, fat elephants at the Zoo!"
"_You_--and _Jingles_--and me!" said Leonie, disengaging her hand from her aunt's. "And you," she said sweetly, laying it on the elder man's coat sleeve.
Heaven had opened wide its gates and she was for pulling everybody in with her, and her eyes danced, and so did her patent shod feet on the rug.
"It's too kind of you, Jan!" broke in her aunt. "I really don't like to let you waste your time with a child!"
"Not at all, Lady Hetth! I love kids--and the Zoo. Where shall I bring her to afterwards?"
"Oh! Yes! bring her to the Ladies' Union Club where I am staying. No! you'd better take her to her Nannie as they don't allow children in the Club, thank goodness. They are staying in York Street, Baker Street, quite convenient for you."
She trailed through the door as she spoke, pouring out a cascade of vapid thanks and announcing also that she had shopping to do at Debenham and Freebody's.
She hadn't, she was going to catch an omnibus in Cavendish Square, being of those who, blindly extravagant in most things, think they economise when spoiling their clothes and temper in a penny ha'penny bus, instead of keeping both unruffled in a taxi, at two shillings.
Ellen, returning later triumphantly with a taxi, held wide the door, a wide and loving smile across her plain face.
"You come too, Sir," said Jan Cuxson. "Do you heaps of good to ride an elephant!"
"I only wish I could, boy," said the man as he laid one hand on the shoulder of the son he loved, and the other on Leonie's head. "But I've much to do in that opium case, and I'm dining out, and shall read a bit when I get back----"
"And I'm dining out too, more's the nuisance, otherwise I could help. Sure to be awfully late as it's a farewell dinner to a fellow at the hospital----"
"Well! See you in the morning! Good-bye, sweetheart, I won't forget the book, and just you make that lazy fellow show you everything!"
He bent and kissed Leonie as she lifted her face, which was an unheard-of thing for her to do, and watched her as, hugging the struggling dog, she ran down the steps and was lifted into the taxi by her companion.
With his foot on the step Jan hesitated, then turned and walked back to his father.
"I don't know why. Sir, but I do wish you'd come too," he said slowly, looking at the man he loved with a love past the comprehension of the younger generation of the present day.
He put out his hand as he spoke and gripped the elder man's hard, then ran down the steps, jumped in beside Leonie, and turned to wave hilariously with her as they sped away to the Zoo.
The brain specialist went back thoughtfully to his room, and when he had closed the door stood for a long time looking out at the little garden with its one big tree.
"I wonder, I wonder," he mused. "I'd give a good deal to get at that ayah--well! why not?--I could start for----" He looked round suddenly, then laughed as he passed his hand over his eyes. "Funny! I thought someone opened the door."
He moved to his desk and turned over his diary, showing blank page after blank page.
"Strange," he muttered. "There is nothing written down after to-day, not a single engagement. I must have entered them in some other book; very careless of me."
CHAPTER VI
"And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate homes."--The Bible.
"Gawd!"
Mrs. Henry Higgins called upon the Almighty in the vernacular of Seven Dials, sought gropingly for the members of her progeny who clutched her skirt, and fortunately kept her head.
"'Enery James--no! Gertrude Ellen--you've gotter better headpiece, jest yer slip along to the keeper an' tell _'im_ to look slippy and come along quick _h'and_ quiet!"
Gertrude Ellen, puffed up with pride at the pull she had had over her brother, slipped off, as her mother continued in a raucous whisper, "Now if that young miss don't deserve a thorough good 'iding! I'd take the skin off yer if any of yer did such a fing, strite I would. Drat yer, keep stilt cawn't yer--you'll rouse the brute!"
She shook her skirts so that the half-dozen clinging children rattled like a bunch of keys, pushed her jet bonnet back from the shiny wrinkled forehead, and waited, her motherly heart aquake in spite of her drastic language.
Jan Cuxson was standing in front of the lions' cage at one end of the