dance on. Oh, we couldn't get along without Tum
Tum!"

Nero was glad to hear this. Though he liked Leo, his lion friend, and
the other animals, even the queer-looking camels, Nero felt more
friendly toward Tum Tum than toward any one else in the circus except
his trainer. For, by this time, Nero had grown to like very much the man
who fed him, and who came into the cage every day to make the lion jump
over the stick.

But Nero had learned many more tricks than this first, easy one. He did
not learn the other tricks as quickly, for they were harder, but the
lion could sit up on a big wooden stool, he could stand up on his hind
paws, and he would open his mouth very wide when his trainer told him
to. In a way Nero had learned something of man-talk, too, for he knew
what certain words meant.

The trainer would call:

"Jump over the stick, Nero!"

The lion knew what that meant, and he knew it was different from the
words used when the trainer said:

"Sit on your stool!"

So, though of course Nero could not understand what the circus men said
when they talked to one another, the lion had learned some words. So he
could talk and understand animal language, and he could also understand
some words of man-talk. And that is pretty good, I think, for a lion who
had not been out of the jungle quite a year.

"Shall we have to push any of the cages?" asked Nero of his friend Leo,
as they both watched the circus men hurrying to and fro in the big barn.

"Oh, no," answered the older lion. "They never let us out of the cages."

"And a good reason, too," declared a humpy camel, near by. "If they let
you lions and tigers out of the cages, you'd run away. We wouldn't do
that. We camels are well-behaved, like the horses and the elephants."

Leo, the old lion, shook his head until his mane dangled in his eyes.

"No," he said, "if they opened my cage, I wouldn't run away. I wouldn't
even go out, unless it was to get something to eat and come right back
again."

"I would!" growled Nero. "I'd go out in a minute, if they opened my cage
door wide enough. I'd go out and run back to the jungle."

"Yes, that's what I used to think, at first," growled Leo. "But after
you've been in the circus awhile you get used to it. It's home to you.

"Why, I remember, Nero, we once had in this circus a lion just about
like you. He always said he'd run away if he got the chance. Well, one
day his cage was left open by accident, and he ran away."