Nero, the Circus Lion | Page 5

I know how we can have some more fun."
"No, I've had enough for to-day," said Nero. "I'm going home and lie down in the cave. My side hurts where the crocodile struck me with his tail."
"Oh, come on! Play tag!" begged Switchie.
"No," said Nero. "I'm going home."
And home he went. As soon as his mother saw him, wet and muddy as he still was, Mrs. Lion said:
"Well, Nero, what happened to you? Did you get into mischief?"
"I don't know, Ma," answered Nero. "But I got in the spring!"
"There! I told you to keep away from the water hole in the daytime!" said Mrs. Lion. "I knew something would happen if you played with that Switchie. That lion cub will get into trouble some day. He is too bold!"
"A crocodile knocked me into the water," explained Nero. "It wasn't Switchie's fault."
"It was the fault of both you lion boys for going where you ought not to," said Nero's mother. "Now you see what happened. But I'm sorry your side is hurt. Go into the cave and lie down. I'll bring you a nice piece of goat meat to eat, and get some soft grass to make you a bed. You'll be all right in a few days, but after this--mind me!"
"I will," promised Nero.
The soft grass, which his mother pawed into a bed for him with her sharp claws, felt very comfortable to his sore side. And the goat's meat, which lions eat when they can get it, tasted very good. Nero soon became dry and then he went to sleep.
When he awakened his brother Chet and his sister Boo were in the cave looking at him.
"Mother says you got into mischief!" exclaimed Boo. "Tell us all about it, Nero."
So Nero did, and when his story was ended Chet said enviously:
"I wish I had been there. If I had, I'd have scratched that crocodile with my claws!"
"You couldn't have hurt him that way," said Mr. Lion, who came into the cave just then. "Crocodiles have a very hard, thick skin on their backs and tails, much harder and thicker than our skin, and even that of an elephant. You can't hurt a crocodile by scratching his back. The only way to hurt them is to turn them over, and while you are trying to do that they'll knock you about with the big tail. So keep away from the crocodiles, children."
"I will," said Nero, and Boo and Chet said the same thing.
"Now hurry and get well," said Nero's father to him, as the lion boy lay in the cave. "You are growing large and strong, and soon you will have to learn to go hunting."
"What's hunting?" asked Nero.
"It is learning how to get your own things to eat," said his father. "When you were little, your mother and I hunted the goats and other animals that we have to eat. But now you are getting big enough to go hunting for yourself. Only I must give you a few lessons."
"Can't I learn to hunt, too?" asked Chet.
"And I?" Boo wanted to know.
"Yes," said their father. "After I teach Nero I'll teach you. One at a time. The jungle is full of danger, and I can teach only one of you at a time how to be careful. So get good and well and strong, Nero, and soon I'll take you on a hunt."
Nero thought he would like this, so he stayed quietly in the cave for a day or two, until his side, where the crocodile had struck him with the sharp-ridged tail, felt much better.
One day, about a week after Nero had been tossed into the spring, he noticed his father sharpening his claws on the bark of a tree.
"What's he doing that for?" Nero asked his mother.
"To get ready for the jungle hunt to-night," answered Mrs. Lion. "I heard him say something about taking you, so perhaps you had better sharpen your claws, also."
"I will," answered Nero, and he did, making the bits of bark fly as he pulled it from a tree in the jungle, not far from the cave where he lived.
When it began to get dark, which it does very early in the big African forest, as the thick trees shut out the light of the sun, Nero said to his mother:
"Aren't we going to have any supper?"
"Not to-night--that is, not right away," said Mr. Lion. "You are going to hunt for your supper, Nero."
"But I am very hungry," returned the little lion boy, who was growing bigger and stronger every day.
"Then you will hunt all the better," growled his father. "There is nothing like being hungry to make a good hunter-lion. Come, now is the time I have long waited for--to teach you to hunt in the jungle. Your mother and Chet and Boo are