“Do I need your advice, Billy,” she said, “when it comes to training animals? Now please open the door.”
“But, Chiquita, you will wait until I summon the attendants to protect you if he attacks you.”
“No, I’m going in now.”
She opened the door herself and stepped in the cage. Buster watched her with eyes of admiration and surprise. He had no fear of her. This dainty little creature could not hurt him. Indeed, she looked so slight and helpless that he felt more like protecting her than hurting her.
She came up to him and rubbed his nose. He grunted with pleasure. Then she patted his head and talked to him in a low, sweet voice. Then she asked him to get down, and when he obeyed she sat on him. She touseled his head, opened his mouth and stuck a hand in it, and finally patted him again, and said:
“He’s all right, Billy, as harmless as a kitten. We’ll put him in the circus tonight in place of poor old Bowser.”
Billy, the attendant, wasn’t convinced of the wisdom of this course, and shook his head, but Chiquita laughed and walked out of the cage.
Buster didn’t know just what they meant, for he had never been in a circus before, but that evening he learned.
He was wheeled into a brilliantly lighted place and stopped alongside of a big circular cage containing nearly a dozen other animals. There was the Old Lion, Spot the Leopard, Boar the Hound, Timber the Wolf, Ocelot the Jungle Cat, and several others which he did not instantly recognize.
His coming started up a commotion among the animals, for just like people they were curious and inquisitive. They eyed him furtively and sniffed at him. But without noticing them he waddled across the big cage and took a vacant place near the Old Lion.