ied H. O. as well as we could with our
handkerchiefs, because he was just beginning to snivel. The brown did
not come off any of us for days.

Oswald was to be Mowgli, and we were just beginning to arrange the
different parts. The rest of the hose that was on the ground was Kaa,
the Rock Python, and Pincher was Grey Brother, only we couldn't find
him. And while most of us were talking, Dicky and Noel got messing about
with the beer-stand tigers.

And then a really sad event instantly occurred, which was not really our
fault, and we did not mean to.

That Daisy girl had been mooning indoors all the afternoon with the
Jungle Books, and now she came suddenly out, just as Dicky and Noel had
got under the tigers and were shoving them along to fright each other.
Of course, this is not in the Mowgli book at all: but they did look
jolly like real tigers, and I am very far from wishing to blame the
girl, though she little knew what would be the awful consequence of her
rash act. But for her we might have got out of it all much better than
we did. What happened was truly horrid.

As soon as Daisy saw the tigers she stopped short, and uttering a shriek
like a railway whistle she fell flat on the ground.

'Fear not, gentle Indian maid,' Oswald cried, thinking with surprise
that perhaps after all she did know how to play, 'I myself will protect
thee.' And he sprang forward with the native bow and arrows out of
uncle's study.

The gentle Indian maiden did not move.

'Come hither,' Dora said, 'let us take refuge in yonder covert while
this good knight does battle for us.' Dora might have remembered that we
were savages, but she did not. And that is Dora all over. And still the
Daisy girl did not move.

Then we were truly frightened. Dora and Alice lifted her up, and her
mouth was a horrid violet-colour and her eyes half shut. She looked
horrid. Not at all like fair fainting damsels, who are always of an
interesting pallor. She was green, like a cheap oyster on a stall.

We did what we could, a prey to alarm as we were. We rubbed her hands
and let the hose play gently but perseveringly on her unconscious brow.
The girls loosened her dress, though it was only the kind that comes
down straight without a waist. And we were all doing what we could as
hard as we could, when we heard the click of the front gate. There was
no mistake about it.

'I hope whoever it is will go straight to the front door,' said Alice.
But whoever it