The big package in the hall had been opened. The tiger's skin lay on the
drawing-room carpet.
Mark was sorry for the tiger.
"He was only a young cat. You'd have loved him, Minky, if you'd seen him,
with his shoulders down--very big cat--shaking his haunches at you, and
his eyes shining and playing; cat's eyes, sort of swimming and shaking
with his fun."
"How did you feel?"
"Beastly mean to go and shoot him when he was happy and excited."
"Five years without any fighting.... Anything else happen?"
"No. No polo. No fighting. Only a mutiny in the battery once."
"What was it like?"
"Oh, it just tumbled into the office and yelled and waved jabby things
and made faces at you till you nearly burst with laughing."
"You laughed?" Mamma said. "At a mutiny?"
"Anybody would. Minky'd have laughed if she'd been there. It frightened
them horribly because they didn't expect it. The poor things never know
when they're being funny."
"What happened," said Mary, "to the mutiny?"
"That."
"Oh--Mark--" She adored him.
She went to bed, happy, thinking of the tiger and the mutiny. When Catty
called her in the morning she jumped out of bed, quickly, to begin
another happy day. Everything was going to be interesting, to be
exciting.
At any minute anything might happen, now that Mark had come home.