Page 152 - A Little Bush Maid

"Better than Bobs?" asked her father.

"Pooh!" said Norah loftily. "What’s this rum thing?"

"A wildebeest," read her father. "He doesn’t look like it."

"Pretty tame beast, T think," Norah observed, surveying the stolid-looking

animal before her. "Show me something really wild, Daddy."

"How about this chap?" asked Mr. Linton.

They were before the tiger’s cage, and the big yellow brute was walking up

and down with long stealthy strides, his great eyes roving over the curious
faces in front of him. Some one poked a stick at him--an attention which

met an instant roar and spring on the tiger’s part, and a quick, and stinging
rebuke from an attendant, before which the poker of the stick fled
precipitately. The crowd, which had jumped back as one man, pressed

nearer to the cage, and the tiger resumed his quick, silent prowl. But his
eyes no longer roved over the faces. They remained fixed upon the man

who had provoked him.

"How do you like him?" Mr. Linton asked his daughter.

Norah hesitated.

"He’s not nice, of course," she said. "But T’m so awfully sorry for him, aren’t
you, Daddy? Tt does seem horrible-- a great, splendid thing like that shut up

for always in that little box of a cage. You feel he really ought to have a
great stretch of jungle to roam in."

"And eat men in? T think he’s better where he is."

"Well, you’d think the world was big enough for him to have a place apart
from men altogether," said Norah, holding to her point sturdily.

"Somewhere that isn’t much wanted--a sandy desert, or a spare Alp! This
doesn’t seem right, somehow. T think T’ve seen enough animals, Daddy, and