“There’s the animal trainer getting ready to go into the lion cage, if you want to see him,” the attendant informed him.
“Yes, I should like to. And thank you very much for your kindness.”
“You’re welcome. Come around again.”
The boy hurried over to the lion cage. The people were now crowding into the menagerie tent in throngs. There seemed to Phil to be thousands already there. But all eyes now being centered on Wallace’s cage, they had no time to observe Phil, for which he was duly thankful.
The animal trainer, clad in red tights, his breast covered with spangles, was already at the door of the cage, whip in hand. When a sufficient crowd had gathered about him, he opened the door, and, entering the cage threw wide the iron grating that shut Wallace off from the door end of the wagon. The big lion bounded out with a roar that caused the people to crowd back instinctively.
Then the trainer began putting the savage beast through its paces, causing it to leap over his whip, jump through paper hoops, together with innumerable other tricks that caused the spectators to open their mouths in wonder. All the time Wallace kept up a continual snarling, interspersed now and then with a roar that might have been heard a quarter of a mile away.
This was a part of the exhibition, as Phil shrewdly discovered. The boy was a natural showman, though unaware of the fact. He noted all the little fine points of the trainer’s work with as much appreciation as if he had himself been an animal trainer.
“I half believe I should like to try that myself,” was his mental conclusion. “But I should want to make the experiment on a very little lion at first. If I got out with a whole skin I might want to tackle something bigger. I wonder if he is going into the tiger cage?”
As if in answer to his question, an announcer shouted out the information that the trainer would give an exhibition in the cage of the tiger just before the evening performance.
“I’ll have to see that,” muttered Phil. “Guess I had better get in and find my seat now.”