"I've no chance of seeing it," said Mrs Louisa Lyons mournfully. "That's what comes of being bed-rid. You miss everything."
Mrs Louisa had been an invalid for three years and was reputed not to have put a foot under her without assistance in all that time, but it was not thought she missed much of what went on at the Corners and Queen's Shore and Harbour Head for all that.
"I don't believe there is any lion," said Jane, who had been shopping at the Corners and had dropped in to see Mrs Lyons. Mrs Lyons was very fond of Jane and had only one grudge against her. She could never pick anything out of her about her father and mother and Lilian Morrow. And not for any lack of trying.
"Closer than a clam, that girl is when she wants to be," complained Mrs Louisa.
"Then how did such a yarn start?" she demanded of Jane.
"Most people think the circus people never had a lion ... or it died ... and they want to cover it up because the people who came to see a lion would be disappointed and mad."
"But they've offered a reward for it."
"They've only offered twenty-five dollars. If they had really lost a lion, they'd offer more than that."
"But it's been SEEN."
"I think folks just imagined they saw it," said Jane.
"And I can't even imagine it," groaned Mrs Louisa. "And it's no use to PRETEND I imagined it. Every one knows a lion wouldn't come upstairs to my room. If I could see it, I'd likely have my name in the paper. Martha Tolling has had her name in the paper twice this year. Some people have all the luck."
"Martha Tolling's sister died in Summerside last week."
"What did I tell you?" said Mrs Louisa in an aggrieved tone. "Now she'll be wearing mourning. I never have a chanct to wear mourning. Nobody has died in our family for years. And black always did become me. Ah well, Jane, you have to take what you get in this world and that's what I've always said. Thank you for dropping in. I've always said to Mattie, 'There's something about Jane Stuart I like, say what you will. If her father is queer, it isn't her fault.' Mind that turn of the stairs, Jane. I haven't been down it for over a year but someone is going to break her neck there sometime."
It happened the next day ... a golden August afternoon when Jane and Polly and Shingle and Caraway and Punch and Min and Ding-dong and Penny and Young John had gone in a body to pick blueberries in the barrens at Harbour Head and were returning by a short cut across the back pastures of the Corners farms. In a little wood glen, full of golden-rod, where Martin Robbin's old hay-barn stood, they met the lion face to face.
He was standing right before them among the golden-rod, in the shadows of the spruces. For one moment they all stood frozen in their tracks. Then, with a simultaneous yell of terror ... Jane yelled with the best of them ... they dropped their pails, bolted through the golden-rod and into the barn. The lion ambled after them. More yells. No time to close the ramshackle old door. They flew up a wobbly ladder which collapsed and fell as Young John scrambled to safety beside the others on the crossbeam, too much out of breath to yell again.
The lion came to the door, stood there a minute in the sunshine, slowly switching his tail back and forth. Jane, recovering her poise, noticed that he was somewhat mangy and lank, but he was imposing enough in the narrow doorway and nobody could reasonably deny that he was a lion.
"He's coming in," groaned Ding-dong.
"Can lions climb?" gasped Shingle.
"I ... I ... don't think so," said Polly, through her chattering teeth.
"Cats can ... and lions are just big cats," said Punch.
"Oh, don't talk," whispered Min. "It may excite him. Perhaps if we keep perfectly quiet he will go away."
The lion did not seem to have any intention of going away. He came in, looked about him and lay down in a patch of sunshine with the air of a lion who had any amount of spare time.
"He don't seem cross," muttered Ding-dong.
"Maybe he isn't hungry," said Young John.
"Don't excite him," implored Min.
"He isn't paying any attention to us," said Jane. "We needn't have run. ... I don't believe he'd have hurt us."
"You run as fast as us," said Penny Snowbeam. "I'll bet you was as scared as any of us."
"Of course I was. It was all so sudden. Young John, stop shaking like that. You'll fall off the beam."
"I'm ... I'm ... scared," blubbered Young John shamelessly.
"You laughed at me last night and said I'd be scared to pass a patch of cabbages," said Caraway venomously. "Now look at yourself."
"None of your lip. A lion isn't a cabbage," whimpered Young John.
"Oh, you WILL excite him," wailed Min in despair.
The lion suddenly yawned. Why, thought Jane, he looks exactly like that jolly old lion in the movie news. Jane shut her eyes.
"Is she praying?" whispered Ding-dong.
Jane was thinking. It was absolutely necessary for her to get home soon if she were going to have dad's favourite scalloped potatoes for his supper. Young John was looking absolutely green. Suppose he got sick? She believed the lion was only a tired, harmless old animal. The circus people had said he was gentle as a lamb. Jane opened her eyes.
"I am going down to take that lion up to the Corners and shut him up in George Tanner's empty barn," she said. "That is, unless you'll all come down with me and slip out and shut him up here."
"Oh, Jane ... you wouldn't ... you couldn't ..."
The lion gave a rap or two on the floor with his tail.... The protests died away in strangled yelps.
"I'm going," said Jane. "I tell you, he's tame as tame. But you stay here quietly till I get him well away. And don't yell, any of you."
With bulging eyes and bated breath the whole gang watched Jane slide along the beam to the wall where she climbed nimbly down to the floor. She marched up to the lion and said, "Come."
The lion came.
Five minutes later Jake MacLean looked out of the door of his blacksmith shop and saw Jane Stuart go past leading a lion by the mane ... "within spitting distance," as he solemnly averred later. When Jane and the lion--who seemed to be getting on very well with each other--had disappeared around the back of the shop, Jake sat down on a block and wiped the perspiration from his brow with a bandanna.
"I know I'm not quite sane by times, but I didn't think I was that far gone," he said.
Julius Evans, looking out of his store-window, didn't believe what he saw either. It couldn't be ... it simply wasn't happening. He was dreaming ... or drunk ... or crazy. Aye, that was it ... crazy. Hadn't there been a year when his father's cousin was in the asylum? Those things ran in families ... you couldn't deny it. Anything was easier than to believe that he had seen Jane Stuart go up the side-lane by his store towing a lion.
Mattie Lyons ran up to her mother's room, uttering piteous little gasps and cries.
"What's the matter?" demanded Mrs Louisa. "Screeching like you was demented!"
"Oh, ma, ma, Jane Stuart's bringing a lion here!"
Mrs Louisa got out of bed and got to the window just in time to see the lion's tail disappear with a switch around the back porch.
"I've got to see what she's up to!" Leaving the distracted Mattie wringing her hands by the bed, Mrs Louisa got herself out of the room and down the staircase with its dangerous turn as nimbly as she had ever done in her best days. Mrs Parker Crosby, who lived next door and had a weak heart, nearly died of shock when she saw Mrs Louisa skipping across her back yard.