into the lion's mouth he popped his head.

Everybody in the big circus tent was quiet for a moment, and then all
the crowd cried out, and clapped their hands and stamped their shoes on
the wooden steps beneath their feet.

"There, you see how tame my lion is!" cried the man, as he pulled his
head from Nero's mouth, and bowed to the people, who were still clapping
and whistling.

"You are a good lion!" said the trainer to Nero in a low voice. "Now you
shall have a nice piece of meat, a sweet bone to gnaw, and a good drink
of water. You did your first tricks very well indeed."

Nero did not quite know what it was all about, but he felt that he had
done well. It did not hurt him to open his mouth and let the man put in
his head, but it tickled the lion's tongue a little, so that Nero wanted
to sneeze. And that wouldn't have been a good thing for the trainer.
However Nero didn't do it.

"What makes the people make so much noise?" asked Nero of Dido, the
dancing bear, who came into the larger tent just then.

"Oh, that's because they liked your tricks," was the answer. "They
always clap and stamp their feet when anything pleases them. They do
that when I dance on the platform on Tum Tum's back."

And, surely enough, the circus crowds did. They liked the tricks of
Dido, the dancing bear, as much as they had those of Nero.

After a while Nero's cage was wheeled back into the tent where the
wagons of the other animals were kept, and Nero was given something
good to eat, and fresh water to drink. Then he felt happy and fell
asleep.

So Nero began his circus life, and he kept it up all that summer. He
traveled about from place to place, and soon became used to doing his
tricks, having the man put his head into his mouth and seeing the crowds
show their surprise.

One day, when the show was being given in a large city, there was a big
crowd in the animal tent. Near Nero's cage were some boys, and I am
sorry to say they were not all kind boys, though perhaps they didn't
know any better. One of the boys had a rotten apple in his hand and he
said to another lad:

"I'm going to give this rotten apple to one of the elephants and see
what a funny face he makes when he chews it!"

"That'll be lots of fun," said the second boy.

I don't, myself, call that fun. It isn't fair to fool animals when you
know so much more than they do. However we'll see what happened.

Nero saw the boys standing near his cage, and he heard the