OUR SERIAL STORY HER DEAREST WISH.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 53, 13 February 1911, Page 9

OUR SERIAL STORY HER DEAREST WISH.

CHAPTER I.

One afternoon in early June, about the happiest-looking girl in all England stood at the entrance of the new carnivora house in the Zoological Gardens.

She stood looking in wistfully and longingly, and then glanced, with a little sigh of regret, at a group of ladies seated under the trees on the lawn a little way off. She had been seated in the group, listening to the small talk for nearly half an hour, and that half hour had just meant so much wasted time to her; for she loved, adored, animals of all kinds, wild or tame —and she hated gossip. So she had got up quietly and strolled off, knowing full well that to stroll away from your chaperon and guardian is an act of disobedience and wickedness of-almost the last degree. . With a sigh, she was going back to the group, when, unfortunately for her, the lion—the big one with the mane—gave a growl and then a roar. This was irresistible, and the girl, abaiwloning the proprieties, passed through the doorway, and with ecstatic enjoyment, sauntered down the house, watching the animals. There were not many people in the place, and she almost bad it to herself, and no words can toll how she enjoyed it. Sometimes she leaned wih both elbows on the iron bar which rails off the cages from the promenade; and now and again she climbed up the steps at the back, facing the dens and sat on one of the seats, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting in her gloved hands. She was very liappy; first, because she was young. Oh, it is good to be only twenty! Secondly, because she was perfectly healthy; and thirdly, Because she had not eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. That is to say, she was as innocent of all evil as the doves that cooed in the cages in the south walk. Alas, how few girls of twenty are there who could lay their little white hands on their liearts and claim a like ignorance! But this child of nature, as her aunt, Pauline Lascelles, called her, had been exceptionally brought up, as will be seen presently. Completely absorbed in the lions and the tiger, the black panther with the temper, and the leopard who declined to change his spots, when sho had got to the end of the carnivora house, she was caught by the splash of the seals who live just outside', and she passed on and instantly grew as absorbed in them also. Leaning on the bar, she watched the keeper put the intelligent, soft-eyed little fellows through their stereotyi>ed tricks, and frankly, and with an “Oh, thank you, thank you; how clever—how very clever they are!” gave the keeper a shilling from the silver-net ted purse which she extracted from the mysterious pocket which ladies favor and no man has ever yet been known to find. From the seals, she sauntered on to the monkey house; but the evil-smell-ing place was too much for her, and, suddenly awakened from her kind of dream, she remembered her aunt, and retraced her steps by way of the lions’ house. ,

As she went through it again, her pace grew slower ,and she lingered, just a moment or two, before the big lion’s—Victor’s—cage. While she was looking at him admiringly, the keeper’s private ' door between the cages opened, and the keeper came out. He was followed by a gentleman who paused a moment to look ronnd him, then, passing something into the keeper’s hand, nodded and walked on. The keeper pocketd his tip, touched his hat with marked respect, and looked curiously after the gentfr-man. The young girl looked after him, too, and a little enviously ; for, fancy being privileged to go “behind the scenes” at the Zoo! She left the carnivora house and walked quickly towards the lawn; then she stopped and looked round, rather aghast, for the group had gone from under the trees ,and Lady Pauline was not to bo seen.

She was not alarmed, because she was neither nervous nor timid; and she felt sure she could find her aunt, who was both tall ami sately and not easily hidden. So, almost as happy as before, she wandered round and about, just pausing on tiptoe, so to speak, before some particularly enticing cage, and keeping her eyes—l will tell you about those eyes very shortly —on the alert. But after half an hour spent in this way, and no aunt in sight, she began to get—well, a little grave and serious. The Zoo is not exactly a wilderness —though there are plenty of wild animals in it—and there are numerous keepers, of whom one can enquire one’s way ; and the girl was not afraid of being lost; but she knew that Lady Pauline would be anxious, and as angry as she could ever find it possible to be, and the girt was getting vexed with herself.

Now, as she had a particularly eloquent face—eyes, lips, and row, which reflected and expressed every passing emotion—it was not to bo wondered at that as she stood at the comer of one of he walks, looking from side to side anxiously, she should attract attention. A nurse-maid dragging two children lichind her, remarked to the eldest: •|/ook at that pretty lidy; she’ve been and lost her wiy.” A young man glanced at her, and waited, longing to speak to her and offer assistance; but ho was young and shy, and he too passed on. Then came the gentleman who had come from behind the dens. He was walking slowly, with his eyes fixed straight before him, and he did not see the girlish figure and the anxious • face

until he was close upon her. And he, too, looked as if he would have liked to pass by. But something in the grey-blue eyes, in tho delicate lines of the girl s white brow, stopped him, against his will. He pulled up, raised his hat, and in a grave voice that was not by any means unmusical, said: “I beg your pardon. Are you looking for any one? Can I help you/” The girl” did not blush, but turned her eyes upon him with an almost boyish frankness. “Oh— thank you,” she said, rather hesitatingly; for how could he help her? “I leave wandered from my people, and lost them. I have been searching for them everywhere, but cannot find them.”

He looked at her—glanced would be the better word—and he saw a slim, girlish figure clad in grey with a simplicity almost Quakerish; a clean-cut, oval face, greyish-blue eyes with dark lashes, arid a mouth that struck him as rather large. The face, he knew even at that first moment, was beautiful —what men call a fascinating one; but he did not think much about it. She was at this, their first meeting, just a girl—probably a schoolgirl—who had lost her mistress or her mother.

And the girl, as her eyes rested on him placidly, incuriously, saw a welldressed man, with a handsome face, with dark-brown ejes and hair. There was a suspicion of grey about the temples, a look of gravity and sadness in tho eyes, which perhaps struck her afterwards. But for the moment she only noticed that he was good-looking and had a distinguished air, and that he seemed rather wearied and a little bored, but too wellbred not to try and conceal it. No voice whispered in her ear: 4 ‘BeIwld this man! He is your fate; the man who will change the current of your life; the man whose slightest word, lightest smile, will have power to move your heart to its very depths!” So she smiled at him with her eloquent eyes; and the man looked gravely into tho face, scarcely noting its fascination.

‘Where did you leave them?” he asked.

“Under the trees on the lawn by the lions’ cage,” she replied. “I strolled in there and wandered further than 1 intended; when 1 came back they had gone.” “No doubt they only left for a time; they may have gone back,” he said. “Oh, do you think so?” she said, with a touch of relief in her voice, a smile in her eyes. “But I can’t find it again. I’ve gone round and round until I feel as if I were in a maze.” He smiled. > “I think I know the place you mean; and if you will allow me, I will take you back to it.” “Thank you,” she said, simply, and as if his offer were quite a matter of course, and to be accepted as readily and naturally as it was made. “This way, then,” he said.

They walked on side by side. He did not look at her curiously, admiringly, as most men, as nearly all the sons of man would assuredly have done, but gazed straight before him as he had done when he had come upon her; and he did not speak for some moments. There was indeed something so strange in his pre-occu-pation that the girl began to think he had forgotten her; and she glanced up at him with a naive, half-mischievous smile in her eyes. He happened to catch the glance, and, as if he had suddenly remembered her existence and proximity; he said: “Is this your first visit to the Zoo?”

“Yes,” she replied. “My very first. We have always lived in the country. This is my first visit to London, and 1 begged aunt to bring me here; I had heard and read so much about it. I am so fond of animals.” “Yes?” ho nodded.

“Yes,” she went on, as freely and frankly as if she had known him for years. “1 have a horse of my own, two dogs, three cats, some white mice and a guinea-pig. I had a monkey, but it broke my aunt’s best tea-set —- old Crown Derby, you know—and it had to go; it Was like a dear little baby with wicked eyes.” He nodded again—he. seemed to bo scarcely listening—and the impression her talk and voice, gave him was, that he had taken charge of a girl who was a mere child.

“I once bought a parrot of a sailor—we live near a port—but aunt said it talked bad language, so I exchanged it for some Belgian hares.” “You must have a perfect menagerie,” he remarked. She laughed. How soon was the man to thrill from head, to foot at that laugh! And yet, now it affected him not the least bit in the world. It struck him as musical, pleasant—that was all.

“It was awfully hard to part with them. I brought the dogs, and the guinea-pig, and the white mice, but I had to leave the rest behind— Oh, there is the place—but my aunt is not there!” she broke off. .

The man looked round, as a man does when ho has undertaken to do something which he knows will be a nuisance. “Perhaps sho is searching for you, as you have been searching for her,” he. said. “We had better go round the Gardens. What is your aunt like? But you will see her, of course, if we run against her.” “She is tall and stately,” said the girl; “ami she is dressed in grey, like 1 am: but in silk. Oh, of course, I should see her over so far off!” “Then let us go rouud,” he said : “there is no cause for anxiety.” (To be Continued.)