The lion was just as scared as the town—and the town was so scared it didn't know the lion was scared at all—and when his trainer got hold of him in the road he was tickled to death to be led back to his cage, and he lay down in the far corner of it, away from the people, and trembled till he shook the wagon it was on.
But if there was any further doubts in any quarter about me being an aristocrat, the way I bit and chased that lion settled 'em forever. That night Freckles and Doc went to the circus, and I marched in along with them. And every kid in town, as they saw Freckles and me marching in, says:
“There goes the dog that licked the lion!”
And Freckles, every time any one congratulated him on being the boy that belonged to that kind of a dog, would say:
“Blood will tell! Spot's an aristocrat, he is.”
And him and me and Doc Watson, his dad, stopped in front of the lion's cage that night and took a good long look at him. He was a kind of an old moth-eaten lion, but he was a lion all right, and he looked mighty big in there. He looked so big that all my doubts come back on me, and I says to myself: “Honest, now, if I'd a-known he was a lion, and that big a lion, when I bit him, would I have bit him or would I not?”
But just then Freckles reached down and patted me on the head and said: “You wasn't afraid of him, was you, old Spot! Yes, sir, blood will tell!”