I was so frightened that I laid awake the rest of the night with visions of that beast jumping through one of the windows for they were almost at ground level. She laughed and said that she was aware of his presence. too. I swore I would never sleep in that cottage again unless we had some protection, so Carlin asked Grandma if she still had his Grandfather's gun around. She told him it was up in the attic and we were welcome to use it, if it became necessary. To please me, that gun was kept by the bed for the rest of our stay and I slept blissfully.
Ignorance is bliss, though.
A few weeks after our return to New York we were at a dinner party when I overheard my husband telling a friend of ours about my experience with the panther. I decided to be a good sport about their hilarity at my expense and pretend I had not heard the conversation. He hadn't finished his story, though, for he went on to say that his Grandfather's gun wasn't even loaded. It was so old that bullets for it were no longer available and, even if they were, the gun was so rusty inside that it would never fire. Long before we returned to New York I began to suspect that, although my husband loved me very much, I had a rival named Jupiter.