Nero, the Circus Lion | Page 2

one day, waiting for her mother to come back. Mrs. Lion had gone
out a little way into the jungle to get something to eat.
All of a sudden Boo, who up to then had no name, heard some one
coming along the jungle path, stepping on twigs and tree branches and
making them crack. By this sound the little girl lion cub knew some
one was coming.
"That must be my mother," thought Boo. "I'll just hide behind this piece
of rock, and then I'll jump out and make believe to scare her. It will be
lots of fun."
So Boo hid behind the rock near the front door of the cave-house, and,
when the noise came nearer, the little girl lion jumped out and cried:
"Boo!" or something that sounded very much like it.
But the little girl lion had made a mistake. Instead of her mother who
was coming along the jungle path, it was a big prickly hedgehog with
sharp quills all over his back, and when Boo put out her paw she was
stuck full of stickery quills. The quills in a hedgehog's back are loose,
and come out easily.
"Boo! Boo!" roared the little lion cub girl, but this time she was crying
instead of trying to make believe scare some one. The hedgehog,
however, was very much frightened--almost all the jungle animals were
afraid of the lions--and this hedgehog ran away.

But the little girl lion's paw hurt her very much, and when a little later,
Mrs. Lion came back, with something to eat, and found out what had
happened, she said Boo had been very foolish.
And when Mr. Lion heard the story, and Nero and Chet had been told
about it, they all said that "Boo" would be a very good name for the
little sister lion.
"I don't care what you call me," said Boo, speaking in lion talk of
course. "I don't care what my name is, if you'll only get these hedgehog
stickers out of my paw."
Then they pulled the hedgehog spines out of the little girl lion's paw,
and she washed it in cool water at the spring, which made her foot feel
better.
For two years the lion cubs, Nero, Chet and Boo, had lived with their
father and mother in the jungle cave. They learned how to tread softly
on the leaves and twigs of the jungle path, so as to make no noise. They
learned how to creep quietly down to the spring at night to get a drink,
so that the hunters would not hear them.
All about them, in the jungle, lived other wild animals. There were
several families of lions in that same part of the forest, and very often a
herd of elephants would pass by, tramping and crashing their way
through the jungle. The lions never bothered the elephants.
"Where are you going, Nero?" asked his mother of the lion boy cub one
day, as she saw him starting out from the jungle cave. "Where are you
going?"
"Oh, just out to have some fun," he answered. "I'm going to play with
Switchie."
"Switchie," was the name of another lion boy cub, who lived in the
cave next to Nero's. He was about a year older than the lion chap about
whom I am going to tell you in this story. Switchie was called that
because he switched his tail about in such a funny way.

"So you are going to play with Switchie, are you?" asked Mrs. Lion, as
she looked at a place where a sharp stone had cut her foot, though the
sore was now getting better. "Well, if you go to play with that lion boy
don't get into mischief."
"What's mischief, Ma?" asked Nero.
"Mischief is trouble," his mother answered, speaking in lion talk, just
as your dog or your cat speaks its own kind of language. "So don't get
into trouble. Don't go to the spring now to get a drink, for the hunters
may be watching, and may shoot you with an arrow, or with a queer
lead stone, from a thing called a gun, which is worse. So don't get into
mischief."
"I won't," promised Nero, and he meant to keep his word, but then he
didn't count on Switchie. That chap was a bold little lion cub, larger
than Nero, and always up to some trick.
"Hello, Nero!" growled Switchie, when he saw his friend coming along
the jungle path.
"Hello!" growled Nero.
Now please don't imagine, just because these lions growled, that they
were cross. They weren't anything of the sort. That was just their way
of talking. Your dog barks and growls, and that is his way of speaking.
Your cat mews and sometimes growls or "spits," and often