“Dugald,” said Lady Haigh one evening, when Penelope happened to be out of earshot, “don’t you think Major Keeling would like to pay us a visit here?”
“It’s not a bad place,” returned her husband, glancing round at the tents pitched among the trees. “But who ever heard of a sub inviting his chief out into camp to stay with him?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that exactly. He might come without being definitely asked. He would be sure to like to hear how we are getting on, wouldn’t he? Well, if I mentioned that you have had five tigers already, and were going after another soon----”
“You won’t mention anything of the kind,” growled Sir Dugald. “I’m going to bag that man-eater, if any one does.”
Lady Haigh laughed gently. “Well, perhaps I might find other attractions as strong,” she said. “But I mean to get him here.”
But circumstances over which she had no control were destined to intervene.
“Why, Dugald, where are you off to so early?” cried Lady Haigh, coming out of her tent at breakfast-time, and finding her husband and his boy busy selecting guns, filling powder-flasks, and laying in a store of bullets, flints, percussion-caps, and other necessaries unknown to the sportsman of to-day.
“After the man-eater. They’ve sent me _khubber_ of him at last. It’s right out at Rajkot, so I shall be gone all day, even if I don’t have to wait over to-night. You needn’t get nervous if I do.”
“You might just as well let us come,” she sighed argumentatively.
“I have far too much respect for your life--and mine. If you came you wouldn’t be satisfied without a gun, which would go off of its own accord, like poor Mr Winkle’s, and then--well, I would rather be the tiger than any human being in your neighbourhood.”
“Isn’t he horribly rude, Pen? We don’t want to go pushing through jungle-grass after an old mangy tiger, do we? We are going to engage in light and elegant employments suited to our sex. He knows quite well that if I can’t shoot straight it’s his fault for not having taught me. If only I had had the sense to learn before I came out, I would slip away and get to Rajkot before him, and the first thing he saw when he got there would be a dead tiger.”
“More likely that I should find myself a sorrowing widower,” said Sir Dugald, who was in high good humour at the prospect of getting a sixth tiger. “No, no, stick to your weeds and straws, ladies, and don’t get into mischief while I’m gone. You talked of going out to that dry _jheel_ to the eastward, and you can’t do much harm there. Take Murtiza Khan with you, of course.”