he is unusually large. Let's all go, Jane--what
do you say?" And he turned toward his wife, but that lady only shook
her head in a most positive manner, and turning to Mr. Moore asked him
if it was not time that he and Jack were in the study for the morning
recitations. When the two had left she turned toward her husband.

"John," she said, "something must be done to discourage Jack's tendency
toward anything that may excite the cravings for the savage life which
I fear he has inherited from you. You know from your own experience
how strong is the call of the wild at times. You know that often it
has necessitated a stern struggle on your part to resist the almost
insane desire which occasionally overwhelms you to plunge once again
into the jungle life that claimed you for so many years, and at the
same time you know, better than any other, how frightful a fate it
would be for Jack, were the trail to the savage jungle made either
alluring or easy to him."

"I doubt if there is any danger of his inheriting a taste for jungle
life from me," replied the man, "for I cannot conceive that such a
thing may be transmitted from father to son. And sometimes, Jane, I
think that in your solicitude for his future you go a bit too far in
your restrictive measures. His love for animals--his desire, for
example, to see this trained ape--is only natural in a healthy, normal
boy of his age. Just because he wants to see Ajax is no indication
that he would wish to marry an ape, and even should he, far be it from
you Jane to have the right to cry 'shame!'" and John Clayton, Lord
Greystoke, put an arm about his wife, laughing good-naturedly down into
her upturned face before he bent his head and kissed her. Then, more
seriously, he continued: "You have never told Jack anything concerning
my early life, nor have you permitted me to, and in this I think that
you have made a mistake. Had I been able to tell him of the
experiences of Tarzan of the Apes I could doubtless have taken much of
the glamour and romance from jungle life that naturally surrounds it in
the minds of those who have had no experience of it. He might then
have profited by my experience, but now, should the jungle lust ever
claim him, he will have nothing to guide him but his own impulses, and
I know how powerful these may be in the wrong direction at times."

But Lady Greystoke only shook her head as she had a hundred other times
when the subject had claimed her