Mrs. Packletide was pardonably annoyed at the discovery; but ,at any rate, she was the possessor of a dead tiger, and the villagers, anxious for their thousand rupees, gladly connived at the fiction that she had shot the beast. And miss mebbin was a paid companion. Therefore Mrs packletide faced the cameras with a light heart, and her picture fame reached from the pages of Texas weekly snapshot to the illustrated Monday supplement of the Novoe vremya. As for Loona Bimberton,she refused to look at an illustrated paper for weeks, and her letter of thanks for the gift of a tiger claw brooch was a model of repressed emotions. The luncheon party she declined. There are limits beyond which repressed emotions become dangerous.
"How amused every one would be if they know what really happened"said Louisa mebbin a few days after the ball.
"What do you mean?"asked Mrs packletide quickly.
"How you shot the goat and frightened the tiger to death,"sad miss mebbin, with her disagreeably pleasant laugh.
"No one would believe it,"said Mrs packletide, her face changing colour as rapidly as through it were going through a book of patterns before post time.
"Loona Bimberton would,"said miss mebbin. Mrs packletide's face settled on an unbecoming shade of greenish white.
"The incidental expenses are so heavy,"she confides to enquiring friends. Who is the speaker? What is the referring to here?
Do you think the silent figure of Loona Bimberton in the background, plays a crucial role in the story?