"It is a great bore for more than two to try to keep together in this place. Don't you think so?" asked Van Tassel.
"It is very difficult, certainly," agreed the girl. "Isn't it strange to look about this wonder-world of a street and realize that it is just the Midway Plaisance? Recall the old driveway at this hour."
"Yes; early evening was its most populous time too; but even then, how quiet it was. What a wild idea it would have been to expect to see Turkish dancing-girls, half-naked Dahomeyans, and all the rest, living in those still, green fields. Have you been in to Hagenbeck's and seen the marvelous trained animals?"
"Yes; but it is a rather creepy pleasure to watch lions, tigers, bears, and leopards walking around that one solitary man and hissing threateningly at him even while they obey."
"The one moment when I found my breath short was when the trainer made five lions lie down on the ground, and threw himself on his back upon them as though on a rug. He flung his arms out and caressed their great noses. I tell you, I didn't like him to let those beasts out from under his eyes."
"That was thrilling, I remember; but I felt for the lions sometimes, too. I didn't like to see them demean themselves. When one had to hold the end of a rope in his teeth and swing it to let a hound jump, it seemed rather small business to demand of the king of the forest."
When the two friends, stopping often by the way to watch some curious object of interest, reached the Japanese bazaar, they went in for a few minutes. By the time they emerged, the twilight had wholly faded.
"See your kings of the forest!" exclaimed Jack.
Mildred looked across the street. There in mid-air, apparently suspended like Mahomet's coffin, the iron cage above the entrance to the Hagenbeck arena was brilliant with electric light. Five great lions were within, and the strange effect, in the surrounding darkness, was heightened when the trainer, whip in hand, entered and closed the door behind him. In a shorter time than it takes to tell it, Jack and Mildred found themselves in the centre of an ever-growing crowd, all with upturned faces watching the wondrous apparition. The magnificent beasts glided lithely back and forth, watching the trainer, who, exciting them more and more by the whip which he cracked in the air, adroitly avoided being knocked down as they bounded about him, passing and repassing one another with increasing swiftness.
"A great advertisement," remarked Jack; then, as Mildred moved and turned her head, "Are you being uncomfortably crowded?" he asked.