The keeper had crept, bent double, along the inside of the barrier, and had most suddenly and surprisingly seized Leonie by the waist and wrenched her free from the bars to which she had tried to cling, holding her like a vice in his arms where she vainly kicked and struggled for freedom.

CHAPTER VII

  “. . . that man could not be altogether cleared
  from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now
  does.”—­Plutarch.

The whole house was in an uproar.

The lions were trotting round and round, stopping to listen and snuff in the sawdust near the bars; the stumpy jaguar, black as ink, with a body like a steel case, was rushing up and down, rubbing its forehead fiercely as it turned; a lion and his mate were rearing themselves one after the other against the walls, half turning from the middle to fall almost backward in that peculiar movement which reminds one forcibly of great succeeding waves stopped and thrown back upon themselves by some bleak rock.

People were pushing and straining to look in at the windows, and rattling the doors which had been hurriedly locked by the keepers who had rushed to ascertain the cause of the tumult, whilst the tiger made the place resound with its terrific roars as it hurled its huge weight again and again at the bars of its cage.

“Come on, Mother,” shouted the keeper above the din, “bring all those children and let’s get out.  They’ll quieten down when we’ve gone.  Can’t you read!”

He shook Leonie slightly under the stress of his agitation as he hauled her in front of the notice which commands you to refrain from climbing the barrier.

“Of course I can wead,” she replied with dignity; “I’m weading the little——­”

“Well! read that!”

“But—­but”—­stammered Leonie, having read with difficulty—­“but I knew the tiger, Mr. Keeper!”

“Oh! yes! of course!  You were tiger ’unting and brought him from the Sunderbunds about four years ago; it wasn’t the gentleman, of course not!”

“But weally,” pleaded Leonie with the tears very near, “weally I’ve—­I’ve dweamed lots about him, and—­and—­and——­”

“Take her away, Sir—­she makes me see red she does.  No thank you.  Sir—­very much obliged, but it’s part of my duty to see that people don’t climb the barrier, and I kind of failed—­p’raps the little girl what came and——­”

They were outside by this time and the centre of an interested admiring crowd; it is only bleeding meat at three o’clock as a rule which can rouse the inhabitants of the lion house from their prison apathy.

Taking the dirty little paw Cuxson, crumpling up a note, put it into the dirty little palm and closed the fingers tightly over it.  Whereupon Gertrude Ellen blushed furiously, and went to her mother with her clenched fist behind her back, where she kept it stiffly until tea-time, when she held out the bit of paper without a word, to the tune of “Lawks a mercy me!” from her mother, who immediately ordered more buns on the strength of it.