thing,' said the father. 'Teddy's safer with that little beast than
if ho had a bloodhound to watch him. If a snake came into the nursery
now----'

But Teddy's mother wouldn't think of anything so awful.

Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast-in the
verandah riding on Teddy's shoulder, and they gave him banana and
some boiled egg; and he sat on all their laps one after the other,
because every well-brought-up mongoose always hopes to be a
house-mongoose some day and have rooms to run about in, and
Rikki-tikki's mother (she used to live in the General's house at
Segowlee) had carefully told Rikki what to do if ever he came across
white men.

Then Rikki-tikki went out into the garden to see what was to be seen.
It was a large garden, only half cultivated, with bushes as big as
summer-houses of Marshal Niel roses, lime and orange trees, clumps of
bamboos, and thickets of high grass. Rikki-tikki licked his lips.
'This is a splendid hunting-ground,' he said, and his tail grew
bottle-brushy at the thought of it, and he scuttled up and down the
garden, snuffing here and there till he heard very sorrowful voices
in a thorn-bush.

It was Darzee, the tailor-bird, and his wife. They had made a
beautiful nest by pulling two big leaves together and stitching them
up the edges with fibres, and had filled the hollow with cotton and
downy fluff. The nest swayed to and fro, as they sat on the rim and
cried.