Uncle Jean found that Clown learned tricks easily—he seemed to like to show off—but in other ways he was not so easily managed. He was rather fond of having his own way, and his young mistress got more than one scolding for spoiling him. He insisted on being fed from her own hand, and he would sleep nowhere but in Bertha's room.
Men are conceited things and think themselves much wiser than the animals, but I don't believe they know so very much more after all. It's a question whether the animal's instinct isn't of as much use to him as intelligence is to man. Anyhow, animals can understand one another, even animals of different kinds. I rather think they understand one another better than we understand them.
However that may be, Clown was a wonder. You had only to say what you wanted him to do and he would do it like an old hand. He would jump through a hoop, give his right or left hand as he was asked, leap backward or forward, walk on his hands or feet—all this was child's play to him.
He dearly loved games—such as he could play, of course. He would toss a ball, hunt the thimble, and without ever making a mistake bring back the handkerchief to its owner, grinning with delight. With a policeman's helmet on his head, and a piece of sugar on his nose, looking like a soldier on parade, he would carry arms for hours at a time. What surprising things he could do! You would scarcely believe it, but he had learned to recognize certain letters of the alphabet and to put together the word, B-E-R-T-H-A.
He never made a mistake in spelling the name of his little mistress, although that was, however, the first and last word that they succeeded in teaching him.
Alas, with all his good qualities Clown had his failings. Nobody, sad to say, is faultless. He was given to stealing. A sugar bowl left within his reach had a very bad time of it; he ate all the sugar, to the very last piece, and it was a lucky thing if he didn't break the bowl as well. Clown was greedy, there was no denying.
