She was wondering what this gift was that put awe into the eyes of the native keepers on her father’s wild animal farm and temporary peace in the hearts of the savage beasts.  She realized that she possessed it, but it was beyond analysis.  Often some wild-eyed keeper would burst in upon her.  Some newly captive lion or tiger was killing itself from mere passion, and wouldn’t the Mem-sahib come at once and talk to it?  There was a kind of pity in her heart for these poor wild things, and perhaps they perceived this pity, which was fearless.

“She gets a little from me, I suppose,” Colonel Hare had once answered to a query, “for I’ve always had a way with four footed things.  But I think Ahmed is right.  Kathlyn is heaven born.  I’ve seen the night when Brocken would be tame beside the pandemonium round-about.  Yet half an hour after Kit starts the rounds everything quiets down.  The gods are in it.”

The living-room of the bungalow was large and comfortable.  The walls were adorned with the heads of wild beasts and their great furry hides shared honors with the Persian rugs on the floor.  Hare was a man who would pack up at a moment’s notice and go to the far ends of the world to find a perfect black panther, a cheetah with a litter, or a great horned rhinoceros.  He was tall and broad, and amazingly active, for all that his hair and mustache were almost white.  For thirty years or more he had gone about the hazardous enterprise of supplying zoological gardens and circuses with wild beasts.  He was known from Hamburg to Singapore, from Mombassa to Rio Janeiro.  The Numidian lion, the Rajput tiger, and the Malayan panther had cause to fear Hare Sahib.  He was even now preparing to return to Ceylon for an elephant hunt.

The two daughters went over to the tea tabouret, where a matronly maid was busying with the service.  The fragrant odor of tea permeated the room.  Hare paused at his desk.  Lines suddenly appeared on his bronzed face.  He gazed for a space at the calendar.  The day was the fifteenth of July.  Should he go back there, or should he give up the expedition?  He might never return.  India and the border countries!  What a land, full of beauty and romance and terror and squalor, at once barbaric and civilized!  He loved it and hated it, and sometimes feared it, he who had faced on foot many a wounded tiger.

He shrugged, reached into the desk for a box of Jaipur brass enamel and took from it a medal attached to a ribbon.  The golden disk was encrusted with uncut rubies and emeralds.

“Girls,” he called.  “Come here a moment.  Martha, that will be all,” with a nod toward the door.  “I never showed you this before.”

“Goodness gracious!” cried Winnie, reaching out her hand.

“Why, it looks like a decoration, father,” said Kathlyn.  “What lovely stones!  It would make a beautiful pendant.”

“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity,” said the colonel, smiling down into their charming faces.  “Do you love your old dad?”