Now here was one of them turning up in the odour of
sanctity, so to speak, and claiming the traditional hospitality of the
East."
"It was rather trying, but you could have left your husband to do most of
the entertaining."
"My husband was fifty miles up-country, talking sense, or what he
imagined to be sense, to a village community that fancied one of their
leading men was a were-tiger."
"A what tiger?"
"A were-tiger; you've heard of were-wolves, haven't you, a mixture of
wolf and human being and demon? Well, in those parts they have
were-tigers, or think they have, and I must say that in this case, so far
as sworn and uncontested evidence went, they had every ground for
thinking so. However, as we gave up witchcraft prosecutions about three
hundred years ago, we don't like to have other people keeping on our
discarded practices; it doesn't seem respectful to our mental and moral
position."
"I hope you weren't unkind to the Bishop," said Annabel.
"Well, of course he was my guest, so I had to be outwardly polite to him,
but he was tactless enough to rake up the incidents of the old quarrel,
and to try to make out that there was something to be said for the way
his side of the family had behaved; even if there was, which I don't for
a moment admit, my house was not the place in which to say it.
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