“Oh, save me! Save me!” cried the man.
“Bur-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!” roared the lion.
“Oh, can’t you help the poor man?” asked Beckie, of George, the big bear.
“I’ll try,” said George. Then he ran after the lion, and with the long pole which the Professor let George carry as a soldier-gun, George tripped up the roaring lion beast. Just then the Professor blew a loud blast on his brass horn, and Beckie and Neddie threw a lot of oak tree acorns at the lion. All this frightened the lion very much, especially when he felt the acorns hitting him. He thought they were bullets, and he thought the noise of the brass horn meant that a lot of soldiers were coming after him.
So away ran the lion through the woods, and the man was safe. Oh, how thankful he was!
“You saved my life,” he said to the Professor, and to Neddie and Beckie and George. “What can I do for you? where are you going?”
“We are looking for a Thanksgiving dinner,” said the Professor, “but we have not found it yet.”
“Ha! Say no more!” cried the man, quickly. “Come with me! I will give you the best Thanksgiving dinner you ever ate!”
“Who are you?” asked Beckie.
“I am a circus man,” answered the one the lion had chased. “But we do not give shows in winter. I have all my animals in a big barn, not far away. This morning that lion would not bring in a pail of milk when I asked him to, and to punish him I said he could have no dinner. So he chased me, and I don’t know what he would have done had he caught me. But you saved me, the lion has run away, and I suppose a policeman monkey will catch him. But you—come to my animal barn and you may have the dinner I was going to give the lion, as well as all you can eat besides. Come on!”