indefinitely, you know. And I took the tiger-cub back with me to
Father and he was very cunning--but--" Languorously the speech trailed
off into indistinctness. "But the people at the hotel were--were
indifferent to him," she rallied whisperingly. "And I had to let him
go."

"You got off a train? In India? Alone?" snapped Barton. "And went
following a dirty, sneaking fakir for two days? Well, of all the
crazy--indiscreet--"

"Indiscreet?" mused little Eve Edgarton. Again out of the murky
blackness her tilted chin caught up the flare of yellow lantern-light.
"Indiscreet?" she repeated monotonously. "Who? I?"

"Yes--you," grunted Barton. "Traipsing 'round all alone--after--"

"But I never am alone, Mr. Barton," protested the mild little voice.
"You see I always have the extra saddle, the extra railway ticket, the
extra what-ever-it-is. And--and--" Caressingly a little gold-tipped
hand reached out through the shadows and patted something indistinctly
metallic. "My mother's memory? My father's revolver?" she drawled.
"Why, what better company could any girl have? Indiscreet?" Slowly the
tip of her little nose tilted up into the light. "Why, down in the
Transvaal--two years ago," she explained painstakingly, "why, down in
the Transvaal--two years ago--they called me the best-chaperoned girl
in Africa. Indiscreet? Why, Mr. Barton, I never even saw an indiscreet
woman in all my life. Men, of course, are indiscreet sometimes," she
conceded conscientiously. "Down in the Transvaal two years ago, I had
to shoot up a couple of men for being a little bit indiscreet, but--"