too, after they put me in a cage and brought
me from the jungle," said Nero, as he thought of his voyage on the ship.

"Well, maybe you can learn to do them here, and that will be a trick,"
returned Tum Tum. "But you should see Dido, the dancing bear. He surely
can dance!"

"Who is talking about me?" asked the shaggy creature in the other cage.

"We are, Dido," answered Tum Tum. "I was just telling the new lion how
you dance on a platform over my back."

"Oh, yes," said the bear, opening wide his mouth and showing his red
tongue. "And I wish I could soon start to doing that again. I am getting
tired of the circus barn. I want to be out in the tent."

"It will soon be warm enough," said Tum Tum. "Summer will soon be here,
and then we shall have hot weather."

"Does it get as hot as in the jungle?" Nero asked.

"Sometimes," answered the jolly elephant. "But here comes your keeper,
I guess. He is going to give you some meat."

And, surely enough, along came a circus man with a big chunk of meat on
a large, iron fork. He poked the meat in through the bars of the cage to
Nero, and the lion was so hungry that he began eating at once.

The man who had fed him stood in front of the cage, looking at Nero.

"You look like a fine chap," said the man, talking partly to himself and
partly to the jungle animal. "I think we shall be good friends, and I
will teach you some tricks. Then the boys and girls who come to the
circus will want to watch you. Yes, I'll teach you some tricks. Come,
let's be friends."

Slowly and carefully the circus trainer reached his hand toward Nero's
paw, which was between two bars and partly outside the cage. Nero,
looking out of the corners of his eyes as he gnawed the bone and chewed
the meat, did not know what the man was trying to do. Perhaps the lion
thought that the man was trying to take away the meat.

Whatever he thought, Nero suddenly jumped up and struck with all his
force at the man's hand. But the man was too quick. He pulled his hand
out of the way, and Nero's paw hit the iron bars. And as it happened to
be the paw that had been struck by the bullet, Nero felt great pain,
for the bullet was still in the flesh, though healed over.

"Ouch!" cried Nero, in lion language.

"That will teach you not to strike at me when I am only trying to pat
you and be kind to you," said the man with a laugh. "You are beginning
to learn things, my lion friend."

The man stayed for some time in fro