The lad nodded understandingly.
“How about the lions and the tigers—can you tell when they are going to have bad spells?”
“Well,” reflected the showman, “it’s safe to say that they’ve always got a grouch on. The cats are always—”
“Cats?”
“Yes. All that sort of animals belong to the cat family and they’ve got only one ambition in life.”
“What’s that?”
“To kill somebody or something.”
“But their keepers—don’t they become fond of their keepers or trainers?”
The elephant tender laughed without changing the expression of his face. His laugh was all inside of him, as Phil characterized it.
“Not they! They may be afraid of their keeper, but they would as soon chew him up as anybody else—I guess they would rather, for they’ve always got a bone to pick with him.”