Эдит Несбит
The Wonderful Garden or The Three Cs

CHAPTER XVII
THE LE-O-PARD

‘We simply must write to Aunt Emmeline,’ said Caroline earnestly. ‘I’ve got three new pens and some scented violet ink. I got it at the shop yesterday; it’s lovely. And I’ve been counting up the picture post-cards she and Uncle Percival have sent us. There are forty-two, and twenty-eight of those have come since we wrote last.’

‘I’d almost rather not have the post-cards; they make you feel so horrid when you don’t write,’ said Charles. ‘Suppose we send picture post-cards. You don’t have to write nearly so much.’

I think that would be shirking,’ said Charlotte, who did not want to go out, and more than half believed what she said. ‘Come on. If we must, we must. Necessity doesn’t know the law.’

‘You write, too, Rupert,’ said Charles kindly. ‘Put some Latin in. They’ll love that. Or perhaps you’d tell me some to say. I can put it in if you say how I ought to spell it.’

But Rupert said he couldn’t be bothered, and took down a book – Jesse’s Anecdotes of Dogs it was, with alluring pictures and delightful stories; but he did not really read it.

Caroline, looking up in an agony of ignorance as to the way you spelt assafœtida, which the medicine book said was good for ‘pains in the head brought about by much ſtudy of the printed book,’ saw that Rupert’s eyes were fixed in a dismal stare on the portrait above the mantelpiece, the portrait of Dame Eleanour.

He was looking at it as though he did not see it, and yet Charlotte could not help saying, ‘Isn’t she splendid? She knew all about spells and things. It’s her books we do it out of – at least, most of it.’

‘If she knew all about them, she knew what rotten rot they were,’ said Rupert. ‘You never try to do anything with your spells except the things that would happen just the same without your spelling.’

‘What’s that about my spelling?’ asked Caroline, who had made a bold dash for what she remembered of the way the word looked in the medicine book, and written, in a violent violet smudge, ‘Aſſerphrodite.’

‘I say your magic isn’t real.’

‘We saw you when you were invisible,’ Caroline began, laying down her pen, whose wet nib at once tried to dry, turning from purple to golden green bronze. And then:

‘Yes, I know,’ said Rupert; ‘but if it’s really real, why don’t you do something with it that can’t really happen in puris naturalatibus?– that means just naturally. Why don’t you bring back Mrs. Wilmington’s cat that’s lost? Or find my Kohinore pencil. Then there’s a thing in that book Mr. Penfold’s got. He told me about it. You make a wax image of your enemy and stick pins into it, and every time you stick in a pin your enemy feels a pain in the part you stick the pins into.’

‘How awfully wicked!’ said Caroline in an awe-struck voice.

‘Or you can roast the wax man in front of a fire, and as the wax melts, the man wastes away,’ said Rupert hardly.

‘Oh, don’t!’ said Charlotte.

‘Yes, do,’ said Charles; ‘what else?’

‘Oh, nothing else. It’s better if you get a bit of the enemy’s hair, and put that on your wax man’s head. Mr. Penfold read me bits out of a piece of poetry about it.’

‘Didn’t he say it was wicked?’ Caroline asked.

‘Yes,’ said Rupert reluctantly; ‘but I know what’s wicked without Mr. Penfold telling me, or you either. Just fancy how your enemy would squirm when he felt the pin-pricks; they’d be like sword-thrusts, you know, to him.’

‘Don’t!’ said Caroline; ‘don’t, Rupert, it’s horrid. Please don’t. I don’t want to know about those sort of spells.’

‘Rupert wouldn’t do it, of course,’ said Charles. ‘He’s only talking.’

‘How do you know I wouldn’t?’ said Rupert savagely. ‘Next time you have a pain in your leg, Caroline, you’ll think it’s growing pains, but really it’ll be me, sticking a long hat-pin into the wax image I’ve secretly made of you.’

Caroline got up.

‘Come, Char,’ she said, ‘we’ll go and sit in the drawing-room if Rupert’s going on like this.’

‘He doesn’t mean it,’ said Charles again.

‘Of course I don’t,’ said Rupert, and suddenly smiled. ‘I don’t know why I said it. Don’t be silly. There’s lots of things you could try, though, and not hurt any one. Why don’t you – ?’ He looked vaguely round the room, and his eyes lighted once more on the portrait. ‘Why don’t you make that come to life? If she was a witch, her picture ought to be good for that, anyhow.’

‘I wish we could,’ said all the children together, with deep earnestness.

‘Well, do it then,’ said Rupert. ‘That’s the sort of thing to make me believe, not the duffing things you’ve kept on doing ever since I’ve been here.’

There was a silence. Then, ‘How do you spell “impossible”?’ asked Charles, and then nothing more was heard but the scratching of violet pens.

But from that time, and in between all other thoughts and happenings, Charlotte kept on thinking about that idea. If only the picture could be made to come alive!

And Charles’s fancy played timidly with the idea of the wax man. Not to hurt the person it was like, of course, but just to see if anything happened. Not pins. But just pinching its foot a very very very little, secretly, with the image in your pocket, when the person it was the image of was there, just to see if the person jumped or called out, as you do if you’re suddenly pinched, no matter how gently.

Charlotte’s mind busied itself then and later, in and between other thoughts, with the question of what was the matter with Rupert, and whether something couldn’t be done to help him.

For there was no doubt of it. Rupert wasn’t at all what they had first thought him. Sometimes, it is true, he would be as jolly as you need wish a boy to be. He would start new games and play them in the most amusing and satisfactory way. But always, sooner or later, and generally sooner, the light of life seemed to go out of him, and he would seem suddenly to be not only tired of the game but tired of everything else, and not only tired of everything, but angry with everybody.

‘I’m sure he’s bewitched,’ said Charlotte more than once in those intimate moments when Caroline and she ‘talked things over’ as they brushed their hair. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if somebody’s made a wax image of him, and it’s when they stick the pins in it that he goes all savage all in a minute.’

‘I do think that’s nonsense,’ Caroline always said. ‘I’m sure it wouldn’t be allowed.’

‘How would you make an image of a person’s mind?’ Charlotte woke Caroline up to ask, one night; and when Caroline with sleepy sharpness said, ‘You can’t; go to sleep, do,’ Charlotte answered, ‘I believe you can; there was something written under somebody’s portrait in history, about painting his mind; and if you can paint a mind, you can make a wax image of it. I believe that’s what somebody’s done to Rupert, don’t you? And stuck knives into it? Oh, well, if you will go to sleep!’ said Charlotte.

Rupert grew grumpier and grumpier as the days went on, and seemed to care less and less for being with the three C.’s. He would go for long walks by himself, and seemed to prefer to be with William, who ‘put up’ with him, or even with Mrs. Wilmington, who adored him, to being with the children.

‘And we thought it would be so jolly,’ sighed Charlotte; ‘and the worst of it is Charles tries to imitate him. He speaks quite rudely sometimes, even to you, Caro, and you know he always used to like you best.’

The only thing Rupert seemed truly and constantly to care for was swimming. He went down to the river with Mr. Penfold almost every day, or met him at the bathing-place, and they swam together. With Mr. Penfold, Rupert was nearly always at his best, perhaps because Mr. Penfold never seemed to notice it when he wasn’t.

The village was growing more and more busy and excited as the day drew near when Lord Andore’s coming of age was to be celebrated by what the people called a Grangaileranfeat. This was to be held in Lord Andore’s park and in certain meadows adjoining; there were to be roundabouts and cocoanut-shies and shooting-galleries, and a real circus, with a menagerie and performing elephants and educated seals, – all free. The children looked forward longingly to the day. Lord Andore had sent them cards with his mother’s name and his on them in print, and the name of each child in writing, requesting the pleasure of their company on the occasion of Lord Andore’s twenty-first birthday. And they had joyously, and with much violet ink, accepted. And the day came nearer and nearer. It did not seem worth while to engage in any new magic while there was this real pleasure to look forward to.

And then, the very day before the day, when the roundabouts had arrived and been set up, and the menagerie was howling invitingly in its appointed field, the cup of joy was dashed, as Charlotte said, into little bits. Lady Andore slipped on an orange pip and broke her ankle, and the festivities were postponed until September. So said a card brought by the very footman who had not known their names.

‘He jolly well knows them now,’ said Charles. It was his only comfort.

‘There’s many a pip ’twixt the cup and the lip,’ said Charlotte; and Caroline said, ‘Oh, bother!’

Rupert said nothing. He had been invited too, of course, and had, at moments, seemed pleased. Now he just took his cap and went out, and came home late for tea. The three C.’s learned with feelings of distress, mingled with anger, that Rupert had been to the menagerie by himself, and had seen all the beasts, and that he had also witnessed a performance of the circus people, which they had thought it worth while to give to such of the villagers as cared to pay for their amusements. He had seen everything, from the accomplished elephants to the educated seals.

‘You might have told us you were going,’ said Charles.

‘You could have gone if you’d wanted to,’ said Rupert.

‘Never mind, Charles,’ said Caroline; ‘we’ll ask the Uncle to take us to-morrow.’

‘They’re off to-morrow,’ said Rupert; ‘that’s why I went to-day.’ He added something bitter and almost unbearable about a parcel of kids.

But the circus, as it turned out, was not off next day. An accident had happened. Something was missing, and the circus could not go on its travels till that something was found.

‘I don’t know what it is,’ said Harriet, when she told them about it at breakfast; ‘but they’ve lost something they set store by. Some says it’s an improving seal, and others says it’s a boar-conjector-snake, and Poad told my gentleman friend it was the white-eyed Kaffir made a bolt for freedom and India’s coral strand, where he was stole from when a babe; but I don’t know the rights of it. They sent for Poad. My gentleman friend’ll know all about it next time I see him.’

‘When shall you see him again?’ Charles asked.

‘I can see him whenever I’ve a mind,’ said Harriet proudly. ‘I’m not one of those as has to run after their gentlemen friends.’

‘I do wonder what it is,’ Charlotte said. ‘Do see your friend as soon as you can and ask him, won’t you, Harriet? I do hope it’s not snakes or bears. You’ll be sure to tell us directly you know, won’t you?’

‘Sure,’ said Harriet.

It was from William, however, that they heard what it was that the circus had really lost.

‘It’s a tame Le-o-pard,’ said William; ‘him with the spots that you can’t change, and the long tail.’

‘I know,’ said Charlotte; ‘there’s a leopard’s skin in the drawing-room. Very spotty they are. And fierce, too, I believe. Oh, William! I do hope it won’t come this way.’

‘There’s something about it in the book,’ said Caroline, who, as usual, had her magic books under her arm. She found the place and read, ‘Leopard’s-bane, its government and virtues’ – quite a long piece. When she had done, William said:

‘Thank you very much; quite pretty, ain’t it?’ And Rupert said it was all nonsense.

‘But it won’t come this way, will it?’ Charlotte repeated.

‘It’s a tame one,’ said William, grinning. ‘At least that’s the character it’s got from its last place. But it won’t be any too tame for Poad, I expect. I hear he’s got the job of catching of it. And serve him right too.’

‘Oh, why?’ asked Charlotte.

‘Because,’ said William shortly, and was told not to be cross about nothing.

‘’Tain’t nothing, then,’ he said; ‘’twas the way he acted about my dog license, and the dog only two months over puppy-age, when no license is taken nor yet asked.’

‘I don’t fancy Poad much myself,’ said Rupert; ‘he needn’t have been so keen about catching me.’

‘Now that’s where you’re wrong,’ said William. ‘Hunting of you, that was no more than Poad’s duty; and if he set about it like a jackape, well, some is born silly and can’t help it, and why blame the man? But the dog, ’e worn’t Poad’s duty. He exceeded about the dog, Poad did, and I don’t bear malice; but I’ll be even with him yet about that dog.’

‘How?’ asked Rupert.

‘Oh, I’ll find a way,’ said William carelessly. ‘No hurry. Acts like that act what Poad did about my Pincher, they always come home to roost – them acts do. Now then, Miss Charlotte, leave that saddle soap alone, and get along into the garden. The gates ’as been locked since eight this morning, and you’re to go through the secret way to-day, and not to go outside the garden because of that old speckled Le-o-pard.’

The three C.’s went, but Rupert lingered beside William, fingering the bright buckles of the harness and passing the smooth reins slowly through his fingers.

For some time the three C.’s were very busy in the garden, gathering heart-shaped green leaves and golden fragile daisy-like flowers.

‘I never thought,’ said Caroline earnestly, opening the brown book and sitting down on the terrace steps with a sheaf of green and yellow beside her, ‘that we should need it when I read about it in the Language Of, and in the medicine book. Look here, it says: “It is under Apollo, and the flowers and leaves thereof all leopards and their kind do fear and abhor. Wherefore if it be ſtrewn in the paths theſe fearful beaſts do frequent, they may not paſs, but ſhall turn again and go each to his own place in all meekneſs and ſubmiſsion. Indeed, it hath been held by the ancients, aye and by philoſophers of our own times, that in this herb lieth a charm to turn to water the hearts of theſe furious ſpotted great cats, and to looſe the ſtrings of their tongues, ſo that they ſpeak in the ſpeech of men, uttering ſtrange things and very wondrous. But of this the author cannot ſpeak certainly, ſince the Leopard is not native to this land unleſs it be in Northumberland and Wales where all wild things might well be hidden.”’

‘So, you see,’ said Caroline.

But Charlotte said it was all very well, only how were they to get the bane to the leopard?

‘It isn’t as if we were allowed free,’ she pointed out. ‘I wish they hadn’t been so careful. The leopard would never have hurt us as long as we carried the bane, and we could have surrounded it, like snakes, with ash leaves, and it would have had to surrender.’

‘And perhaps it would have talked to us and followed us like tame fawns,’ suggested Charlotte; ‘or Una; only hers was a lion.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Charles; ‘you know you’d have been afraid.’

‘I shouldn’t,’ said Charlotte.

‘You would,’ said Charles.

‘I shouldn’t.’

‘You would.’

‘I shouldn’t.’

‘You would.’

‘And now you’re both exactly like Rupert,’ said Caroline; ‘and the leopard wandering about unbaned while you’re wrangling. You’re like Nero and Rome.’

Twenty minutes had passed before peace was restored, and the leopard’s-bane lay drooping in the sun, the delicate gold and green heaps of it growing flatter and flatter.

‘Well, then,’ said Charles suddenly, ‘if you’re not afraid, let’s go. No one’s forbidden us to, except William.’

‘I will if you will,’ said Charlotte, turning red.

‘So will I,’ said Caroline, turning pale.

‘Rupert said it was nonsense about the leopard’s-bane when you read it this morning.’

‘That doesn’t make it nonsense,’ said Charlotte sharply.

‘But suppose you meet it?’

‘You can’t – if you keep to the road. Leopards get into trees. They never walk about in roads like elephants do. Not even when the circus man is moving. It’s serious what we’re going to do,’ said Caroline; ‘and what’ll people say about it, depends how it turns out. If we parrylise the leopard and save the village, we shall be heroines like – ’

(‘And heroes,’ said Charles.)

‘Like Joan of Arc, and Philippa who sucked the poison out of the burgesses’ keys at Calais.’

‘And if we don’t put the stuff in the right place, or the leopard doesn’t take any notice of it, they’ll just say we were disobedient.’

‘And suppose we meet the leopard face to face?’

‘It’s a tame leopard,’ said Caroline in a faltering voice.

‘Oh, I don’t want to go. I really am frightened. I don’t mind owning up. I am. I’m so frightened I think we ought to go. I don’t want to so dreadfully, that I’m sure it’s right for me to go. But I wish you and Charles would stay here. Suppose the leopard came over the wall and there was no one here to cope with it?’

She was very pale and she trembled. And when the others, without hesitation, said, ‘Not much, we don’t!’ she certainly breathed more easily.

‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘We’ll strew a little here because of the gardeners. Oh no, of course the roots will make it all safe here. The gate’s locked; we must go through the secret passage and then creep through the stable-yard and out along the garden wall, so that the Wilmington doesn’t see us. And then out by the deserted lodge.’

CHAPTER XVIII
THE LEOPARD’S-BANE

Their minds once made up, the children collected the fading armfuls of leopard’s-bane and made for the arbour that led to the tunnel. Inside the door they lighted the candle, closed and bolted the door as they had been told to, and went carefully down the steps and along the secret passage. And as they went they heard something moving in the darkness that lay thick beyond the little wavering light of their candle.

They stopped and listened. They heard the sound of breathing, and the next moment they saw, vaguely, in the almost darkness, something four-footed, spotted, furry, creeping along the passage towards them. It uttered a low, fierce, snarling growl.

‘Throw it down,’ said Caroline, casting her flowers from her. ‘It can’t pass it. It can’t.’

A heap of tangled crushed leaves and flowers was all that there was now between the children and the leopard.

‘It can’t pass it. It can’t,’ said Caroline again, in an agonised whisper. Yet none of the children dared to turn and fly. Charlotte had remembered what she had heard of quelling wild animals by the power of the human eye, and was trying, almost without knowing that she tried, to meet the eye of this one. But she could not. It held its head down close to the ground and kept quite still. Every one felt it was impossible to turn their backs on the creature. Better to face it. If they turned and ran, well, the door at the end of the passage was bolted; and if the flower-spell should fail, then, the moment their backs were turned, the leopard might – with one spring —

‘Oh, I wish we hadn’t,’ said Charles, and burst into tears.

‘Don’t, oh, don’t!’ said Caroline; and to the leopard, who had not moved, she said, with wild courage:

‘Down, sir! Lie down!’

The leopard lay down, flat – flatter than you would think a leopard could lie.

‘It understands,’ said Charlotte.

‘Oh yes.’ Caroline’s voice trembled as much as the hand that held the candlestick. ‘It does. Poor Pussy! Poor Leopard, then.’

A faint rumbling sound came from the crouching heap of spotted fur.

‘I believe it’s trying to purr,’ whispered Caroline. ‘Of course leopards’ purrs would be different.’

‘Give a paw, then,’ she said very shakily. And the leopard lifted a ragged-looking forefoot. But even Caroline had not the courage to reach out a hand towards it.

‘Go to sleep, good dog, then,’ she said in a distracted whisper. ‘Go to sleep, go by-by, good little leopard, then.’

The leopard curled up and lay quite still.

‘It’s all right, I tell you,’ said Caroline. ‘Stop snivelling, Charles. I knew the leopard’s-bane would do it. Now let’s go back backwards, very slowly, and if it moves, I’ll speak to it again.’

Very slowly, still striving to keep their eyes on the leopard, they retreated. They had not gone three steps before they heard it move. They stopped.

‘Lie down!’ said Caroline. And then, to their mingled horror, wonder, delight, surprise, dismay, and satisfaction, a voice answered them – a curious, choked, husky voice.

‘Leopard stay still,’ it answered; ‘little lady not be frightened. Leopard like flowers. Leopard quite good.’

‘Is it?’ said Caroline, speaking as well as she could through the beating of her heart. ‘Is it the leopard speaking?’

‘Ess, little missy,’ said the choked voice. ‘Pretty flowers loose leopard’s tonguey, make him talky. Leopard tell a secret. Little ladies sow seeds, pinky seeds, hearty seeds, the right day, the right way, and see what come up. Run way now. Leopard done talky. He go sleepy by-by. So long!’

None of them ever knew how they got to the end of the tunnel, got the bolts undone, got the door shut again, and stood in the dusky arbour looking in each other’s paper-white faces.

Charlotte made two steps into the sunlight and threw herself face downwards on the path. Her shoulders heaved. Charles was still weeping without moderation or concealment. Caroline stood shivering in the sunshine.

‘But we’ve got to get back,’ she said. ‘It’s all right this side, because of the leopard’s-bane. But if somebody came behind the leopard’s-bane, from the house, you know? We must climb the wall and get to the house and warn them. Get up, Char. Charles, if you’re ever going to be a man, be one now. There’ll be plenty of time to howl when it’s all over. We must climb the wall, somehow.’

One leaves the children in the garden, a locked door between them and the leopard, trying to find a way of climbing a ten-foot wall. No gardener was to be found and the gates were locked.

‘We must get over,’ Caroline kept saying. ‘Oh, we must, we must! The charm worked perfectly. If we can only get to the other end of the tunnel and throw in some more bane we shall have done the great deed. Try again, Charles. I’ll give you a leg up. We must get over. Try again.’

One leaves Charles trying.

Now although the three C.’s firmly believed that the magic of the green and yellow flowers subdued the leopard and caused it to speak – in a sort of language that somehow recalled the far-off speech of their ayah in India – I cannot quite expect you to believe this. And I feel that I must delay no longer to tell you what it is you can believe. To do this we must go back to Rupert, whom we left with William in the harness-room, fingering the bright buckles and drawing the long smooth reins through his fingers.

‘I say, William,’ he said, ‘couldn’t we play a little trick on that Poad? There’s a leopard skin in the drawing-room. If I got a couple of pillows and a needle and thread?’

‘Eh?’ said William, staring at him. Then suddenly he smacked his leg and laughed aloud. ‘You’ve hit it this time, Master Rupert,’ he said; ‘blessed if you ’aven’t. You go along in and get the skin. Careful now, because of Mother Wilmington.’

‘The drawing-room’s locked,’ said Rupert, ‘and I don’t want to tell the others.’

‘The drawing-room windows isn’t,’ said William. ‘We’ll watch our time, and I’ll make a back for you. An’ never you mind about pillows. Straw’s good enough stuffing. An’ don’t forget the needle and cotton. I expect you’ll find some lady’s working-box in the drawing-room to get them out of.’

Rupert, once safely landed in the drawing-room, found the leopard skin easily enough, but the needle and cotton were not so easily found. He found a work-table indeed, made of satinwood, inlaid with ivory and lined with faded red velvet, where were reels of silk and flat ivory winders with thread on them, but all the needles were red with rust, and fast embedded in their cushions and cases. He looked round. None of the cabinets looked as though they held needles. And besides, what was the use of finding more rusty needles? One rusty needle was as useful, or rather as useless, as fifty could be. He thought of using the blind-cords instead of cotton, but they were too thick, and one could not push them through the leopard skin without tearing it. Then he saw the golden quiet harp standing in its far corner. Its strings perhaps? But he did not know how to unstring a harp, and when he touched one of its fine wires, just the thing for sewing with without a needle, it gave out the thin sweet ghost of a note of music, faint indeed, but loud enough to warn him of the cry it could and would give if he attempted violence. The harp quivered under his hands as he gently let the string go, and something rattled. It was the lid of a sort of box in the pedestal of the harp.

‘Perhaps they kept spare strings there,’ Rupert thought, and opened the lid.

‘They,’ it seemed, had kept spare strings here, and here the spare strings still lay, coiled neatly in little round boxes. Rupert opened several, and choosing the thinner strings, put them in his pocket. One box rattled dryly in his hand, and when he opened it there were no strings, only a number of odd, flat, pinkish heart-shaped seeds. On the box was written, ‘Seed of the F. of H.D. Sow only in the way and on the day.’

He put its lid on and thought, then, no more of the box. But afterwards he remembered it.

And now, with the leopard’s skin in his arms and the wires in his pockets, Rupert went cautiously to the window. Yes, all was safe; so William’s signal told him. He dropped the bright skin into William’s hands, and himself dropped to the ground.

‘I’ve thought of something better than straw,’ he said, when he and William and the leopard skin were alone together in the harness-room. And William, when the new thought was explained to him, slapped his leg harder, and laughed more thoroughly than before.

Rupert had only just entered the secret passage, his first match had just gone out, when he heard the children at the other end. He went towards them, fully meaning to explain what sort of leopard he was, and what sort of joke – he called it a joke to himself – he and William had arranged to play upon Poad. But when he heard them speak, and saw the showers of leopard’s-bane fall on the flags of the passage, he, as he put it later, ‘played up.’ And when the children had gone, he laughed softly to himself and began to think what would be the best spot in the tunnel to wait for Poad in. He had noticed, by the light of that first match, an arched recess, the one, you remember, where the children stored their sacks of wet rose leaves the night they played at Rosicurians and cured Rupert. He would hide in this, and then, when Poad came along, he would jump out at him with that snarl which had sounded so well when he met the children.

He waited till the garden door was locked, and then felt for his matches. He could not find them. He must have dropped them when he was pretending to the children. He felt along the floor, but there were no matches to be found. Never mind, he could feel his way in the dark. He knew exactly where the arch was. To the left, about three-quarters of the way down the passage. He stood up and laid his hand upon the wall, walked forward till he felt the corner of the recess, and stooped to curl himself up in it and wait for Poad. He put his hand out to steady himself as he sat down, and his hand touched, not the stone floor, but soft warm fur. And not dry hard fur like that which he himself wore, sewn tightly round him with harp-strings, but living fur, on a living creature. He drew back his hand, and a cold sweat of horror broke out on his forehead, and the little hairs on the back of his neck seemed to move by themselves. His hand still felt the dreadful warm softness of that fur. It almost seemed to him that he had felt the spots on it.

‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t!’ said Rupert to himself, as so many of us have said when it was too late to say anything. ‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t!’

He stood perfectly still in the mockery of his sewn-on leopard skin, waiting for the real leopard to move, or to settle down. Perhaps it would settle down? The leopard must have crept in when the door into the garden was opened in readiness for the children to pass through. It must have gone to sleep there, and perhaps he had not roused it.

‘Oh, why didn’t I go with the others?’ Rupert thought. And then a good thought came to him.

‘If I had,’ he told himself, ‘I should have been out there, and they wouldn’t have met me and turned back, and then they might have found the real leopard, and it might have jumped on them. I’m glad it’s only me.’

This good thought came to him as he rose up and steadied himself by the wall. Then in an instant all thoughts were drowned in a flood of terror, and Rupert found himself almost running, feeling his way by the wall towards the house entrance. If he could only get out before the leopard was up and after him! He reached the end of the passage. The door at the foot of the stairs was shut and locked. He was alone there in the dark with a locked door at each end of the passage. He crouched down by the door. In spite of his agony of fear he had enough sense not to beat on the door and scream for help, which was, of course, his first mad impulse.

‘Keep quiet,’ he kept telling himself, ‘some one must come soon. If you keep quiet, the leopard will go on sleeping, perhaps. The children will open the garden door when they hear the dinner-bell. Then you can get out. If you make a row, the leopard will wake up and come for you.’

So he crouched and waited. But no one came. Then suddenly he remembered. When the children heard the dinner-bell they would come down the passage. They would find the real leopard. It would certainly wake. His own feelings about the leopard now made him certain that the children, when they were safe in the sunshine, would see that what talked to them, dressed in a leopard’s skin, could only have been a human being dressed up. Most likely they knew already who it was. So they would come back without fear – come back to find him, Rupert, and would find that!