“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,” she added gaily.  And turning on the crouching lynx:  “Bad Tommy!  Wicked, treacherous, bad—­no! Poor old Tom!  You are quite right.  I’d do the same if I were trapped and anybody tried to patronize me.  I know how you feel—­yes, I do, Tommy Tiger.  And I’ll tell old Jonas to give you lots and lots of delicious mud-fish for your dinner to-night—­yes, I will, my friend.  Also some lavender to roll on....  Mr. Hamil, you are still unusually colourless.  Were you really afraid?”