“Gracious, I’m afraid I wouldn’t make a very good circus man. I hate to have everybody looking at me as if I were some natural or unnatural curiosity. Wonder if I will know any of the show people when they are made up, as they call it, and performing in the ring? I shouldn’t wonder if they didn’t know me in my best clothes, though,” grinned the boy.
Phil had had the forethought to bring a few lumps of sugar in his pocket. Entering the menagerie tent, he quickly made his way to the place where the elephants were chained, giving each one of the big beasts a lump. He felt no fear of them and permitted them to run their sensitive trunks over him and into his pockets, where they soon found the rest of the sugar.
After disposing of the sweets, both beasts emitted a loud trumpeting. At such close quarters the noise they made seemed to shake the ground.
“Why do they do that?” questioned Phil of the keeper.
“That’s their way of thanking you for the sugar. You’ve made friends of both of them for life. They’ll never forget you, even if they don’t see you for several seasons.”
“Do they like peanuts?”
“Do they? Just try them.”
Phil ran to a snack stand at the opposite side of the tent and bought five cents’ worth of peanuts, then hurried back to the elephants with the package.
“What are their names?”
“The big one is Emperor and the smaller one is called Jupiter,” answered the keeper, who had already recognized his young visitor.