He waited patiently for suggestions. Tom Blake and Kathryn Blair sat,
foreheads grooved in thought. At length Jack Schuyler cried suddenly:

"I know! Let's play leopard shooting! I saw a picture of one in the
geography. It looked just like Fiddles." Fiddles was the plethoric
Maltese member of the Blake family. "We've got those tin guns, and we can
stalk it. What do you say?"

That which they said was later evidenced; for when Thomas Cathcart Blake
entered the front door of his residence that night and started up the
stairs, he was met by an excited feline, followed by three equally
excited children. And the cat, on seeing him, its cosmogony disrupted to
such an extent that it felt itself no longer able to distinguish friend
from foe, tried to turn back with the result that its first pursuer fell
over it. There was the added result that the next two pursuers tripped
upon the sprawling form of the first. And Thomas Cathcart Blake had great
difficulty in preventing himself from joining the sprawling parade that
tumbled past him to the foot of the stairs, and lay at the bottom, a heap
of tossing legs and arms and ribbons and fur.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE CHILD AND THE STRANGER.