as the curious
smell. My first thought--an awful one--was that the tiger had actually
broken loose, tracked us home, and was now under the bed waiting to
devour us. There was nothing to hinder it but a mosquito-curtain! How
I accomplished it, paralysed as I was with terror, I know not, but I
took a flying leap and landed on G., hitting her nose with my head and
clutching wildly at her brawny arms, much developed with tennis, as my
only refuge.

She was too terrified to resent my intrusion.

"What do you think it is?" she whispered. "Hu-s-h, speak low. Perhaps
it doesn't know there's anyone in the room."

"It's the tiger from the Zoo," I hissed with conviction.

G. started visibly. "Rubbish," she said. "A tiger wouldn't get into a
house. Ah--oh, listen!"

Distinctly we heard the fud of four feet going round the bed.

"Cry for help," said G.

"Sister!" we yelled together.

"Sister Anna!"

"Sister Anna Margaret!"

No answer. Sister Anna Margaret slept well.

"Sister!" said G, bitterly. "She's no sister in adversity."

"Get up, G.," I said encouragingly. "Get up and turn on the light.
Perhaps it isn't a tiger, perhaps it's only a musk rat."

G. refused with some curtness. "Get up yourself," she added.

Again we shouted for Sister, with no result.

You have no idea how horrible it was to lie there in the darkness and
listen to movements made by we knew not what. We felt bitterly towards
Sister Anna, never thinking of what her feelings would be if she came
confidingly to our help and was confronted by some fearsome animal.

"If only," said G., "we knew what time it was and when it will be
light. I can't _live_ like this long. Let go my arm, can't you?"

"I daren't," I said. "You're all I've got to hold on to."

We lay and listened, and we lay and listened, but the padding
footsteps didn't come back; and then I suppose we must have fallen
asleep, for the next thing we knew was that the _ayahs_ were standing
beside us with tea, and the miserable night was past.

G. and I looked at each other rather shamefacedly.

"Did we dream it?" I asked,

G. was rubbing her arm where I had gripped it.

"I didn't dream this, anyway," she said; "it's black and blue."

At breakfast we knew the bitterness of having our word doubted; no one
believed our report. They laughed at us and said we had dreamt it, or
that we had heard a mouse, and became so offensive in their unbelief
that G. and I rose from the table in a di