“Now, Badshah, this is a new Sahib.”

Frank, with the baby girl seated on his shoulder, stepped forward and extended his hand.  The animal smelt it and then laid its trunk for a moment on his free shoulder.

“Badshah accepts you, Mr. Wargrave,” said Mrs. Dermot seriously.  “And there are few whom he takes to readily.”

Eileen, with one arm around Frank’s neck, stretched out the other to the elephant.

“Me love Badshah,” she said.

The snake-like trunk lingered caressingly on her golden head.  The baby caught and kissed it.

“Now then, chickies, time for bed,” said their mother.  “Say goodnight to Badshah.”

The little boy ran to the great animal and hugged its leg tightly, while the snaky trunk touched the child’s face affectionately.

“Come along, Brian.  Let him go now”; and at his mother’s bidding the boy released his clasp and ran to her.

“Goodnight, Badshah. Salaam!” said Mrs. Dermot, waving her hand to the mammoth, while her little daughter on Wargrave’s shoulder imitated her.

The big animal raised its trunk in salute and, turning, walked with swaying stride out of sight behind the bungalow.

“By Jove, what a splendid beast!” exclaimed Frank.  “And how wonderfully well trained he is.  I’m not surprised now that you let the kiddies play with him.”

Mrs. Dermot smiled.

“You would be even less so if you knew his story,” she said.  “He is my husband’s private property now.  The Government of India presented him to Kevin.  Now come back to the house and have tea.  Oh, no, after your long ride you’ll prefer a whiskey and soda.”

“I’d really rather have the tea, I think, Mrs. Dermot.  I don’t feel thirsty up in this deliciously cool air.  It’s awful down in the Plains now.  But what about my elephants and baggage?”

“Tell the mahouts to go to the Mess.  You are to have a room there.”

Frank did so; and the two animals lumbered away up the hill after the mahouts had brought the Colonel’s guns into the bungalow.

Mrs. Dermot led the way into the house.  The little boy had possessed himself of Wargrave’s free hand, the other one being engaged in holding Eileen, who was perched on the subaltern’s shoulder.  Mrs. Dermot found it difficult to separate the children from their new friend when at last she bore them off to bed.

Left to himself, Frank examined with deep interest and admiring envy the splendid display of Colonel Dermot’s trophies of big game shooting that filled the bungalow.  From the walls many heads of bison and buffalo, of sambhur and barasingh, those fine Indian stags, looked mildly at him with their glass eyes; while tigers, bears and panthers snarled at him from the ground.  Long elephant-tusks leaned in corners, smoking and liqueur-tables made up from the mammoths’ legs and feet stood about, and crossed from ceiling to floor; on the walls were the skins of enormous snakes such as Frank had never seen or imagined.  He had thought a six-foot cobra or an eight-foot python long—­here were reptiles sixteen or eighteen feet in length, and he hoped that he would never meet their equals alive in the jungle.