A great lion-skin from Miss Selina’s library had been sewed together so that it appeared as real as when it was alive on the plains of Africa. Inside this skin, Ned had carefully placed himself, and then Uncle Ben had sewn him up in the seam where the two sides of the skin met.
The poor lion must have been frightfully hot inside that skin, and he had to pace up and down the limited cage-room on his hands and feet, for it would never do to stand up on his hind legs and try to get a breath of cool air!
As the sight-seers filed past the lion’s cage, the fierce animal pawed threateningly at the weak, wooden laths which was all that kept him from springing out at the people.
Most of the circus-goers were already past when a strange howl came from the inside of that lion-skin:
“Heigh, Uncle Ben! For pity’s sake rip me out of this—I’m smothering to pieces!”
Some of the visitors were lingering to study the Wild Man from Borneo in the next cage and heard the freak lion that could talk, and everyone laughed uproariously.
Jinks was the “Wild Man” and looked the part, too. Chains of corn and large lima-beans, with here and there a red kidney-bean, strung on strings were profusely hung about his neck. Wide armlets and anklets of tin were wound about his limbs and his hair, which was made of a close-fitted skull-cap with great bunches of hair taken from a mattress found in the attic of Aunt Selina’s house. His face was frightfully scarred with red crayon cuts where he had fought men and beasts and survived; his single garment was a long strip of sheep’s skin wound about his waist. His body was dark red and shiny with oil, and his hands toyed dangerously with barbed arrows and a slender bow that now and then was aimed at his tormentors. Such actions were accompanied with wild grins that showed fierce orange-rind teeth fitted into the mouth of the man-eating human!
The red wolf looked so like Crummie that many of the Little Citizens were tempted to call it by name, and strange to say, the animal acted as if it knew that name! Overhead, however, the placard plainly stated that the red wolf exhibited was one of the dangerous kind found in the Valley of Delight.
“No one kin fool me dat dat’s a wolf! I knows Crummie if no one else does. Diden’ he save my life in de boat dat day of de picnic?” came from Prunel in no weak voice, and everyone laughed again at the poor red wolf. Thereupon the animal wagged its tail.
A strange animal never known to Nature before, was seen in a small case next to the wolf. It was green and red and white streaked, and had a stub tail that was orange colored. The nose was snubbed and a fear-inspiring gleam of teeth projecting from an under-shot jaw would have made one’s flesh creep had the beast been free. But everyone heaved sighs of relief to find Aunt Selina’s old pet Bull dog safely chained in a cage.