"Come into the cave, then, and look," said Father Wolf stiffly, "but there is no food here."

"For a wolf, no," said Tabaqui, "but for a poor and unimportant person like me a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the jackal people], to want only the best things?" He went quickly to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and he started to eat happily. "All thanks for this good meal," he said, licking his lips. "How beautiful are your noble children! How large are their eyes! And so young too! Indeed, indeed, I should have remembered that the children of kings are men from the beginning."

Now, Tabaqui knew very well that it is very unlucky as to compliment children while they are there. It pleased him to see Mother and Father Wolf look uncomfortable. Tabaqui sat still, pleased with the mischief that he had made, and then he remembered something else that would upset the wolves: "Shere Khan, the Big One, has changed his hunting grounds. He will hunt among these hills for the next month, so he has told me." Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River, twenty miles away