ccurately that the bird
veered off with a huge hop of grieved astonishment.

"Alonzo! Go away this instant!" she commanded. And to Hamil: "He's
disgustingly treacherous; he'll sidle up behind you if he can. Give me
that palmetto fan."

But the bird saw her rise, and hastily retreated to the farther edge of
the grove, where presently they saw him pretending to hunt snails and
lizards as innocently as though premeditated human assassination was
farthest from his thoughts.

There was a fountain with a coquina basin in the grove; and here they
washed the orange juice from their hands and dried them on their
handkerchiefs.

"Would you like to see Tommy Tiger?" she asked. "I'm taming him."

"Very much," he said politely.

"Well, he's in there somewhere," pointing to a section of bushy jungle
edging the grove and around which was a high heavy fence of closely
woven buffalo wire. "Here, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!" she called, in her
fresh young voice that, at times, broke deliciously in a childish
grace-note.

At first Hamil could see nothing in the tangle of brier and
saw-palmetto, but after a while he became aware of a wild-cat, tufted
ears flattenend, standing in the shadow of a striped bush and looking
at him out of the greenest eyes he had ever beheld.

"Pretty Tom," said the girl caressingly. "Tommy, come and let Shiela
scratch his ears."

And the lynx, disdainfully shifting its blank green gaze from Hamil,
hoisted an absurd stub of a tail and began rubbing its lavishly
whiskered jowl against the bush. Nearer and nearer sidled the lithe
grayish animal, cautiously the girl advanced, until the cat was rubbing
cheek and flank against the woven-wire fence. Then, with infinite
precaution, she extended her hand, touched the flat fierce head, and
slowly began to rub it.

"Don't!" said Hamil, stepping forward; and at the sound of his voice and
step the cat whirled and struck, and the girl sprang back, white to the
lips.

For a moment she said nothing, then looked up at Hamil beside her, as
pale as she.

"I am not hurt," she said, "only startled."

"I should not have spoken," he faltered. "What an ass I am!"

"It is all right; I ought to have cautioned you about moving or
speaking. I thought you understood--but please don't look that way, Mr.
Hamil. It was not your fault and I am not hurt. Which teaches me a
lesson, I hope. What is the moral?--don't attempt to caress the
impossible?--or something similarly senseless,