"Well, maybe you can learn to do them here, and that will be a trick," returned Tum Tum. "But you should see Dido, the dancing bear. He surely can dance!"
"Who is talking about me?" asked the shaggy creature in the other cage.
"We are, Dido," answered Tum Tum. "I was just telling the new lion how you dance on a platform over my back."
"Oh, yes," said the bear, opening wide his mouth and showing his red tongue. "And I wish I could soon start to doing that again. I am getting tired of the circus barn. I want to be out in the tent."
"It will soon be warm enough," said Tum Tum. "Summer will soon be here, and then we shall have hot weather."
"Does it get as hot as in the jungle?" Nero asked.
"Sometimes," answered the jolly elephant. "But here comes your keeper, I guess. He is going to give you some meat."
And, surely enough, along came a circus man with a big chunk of meat on a large, iron fork. He poked the meat in through the bars of the cage to Nero, and the lion was so hungry that he began eating at once.
The man who had fed him stood in front of the cage, looking at Nero.
"You look like a fine chap," said the man, talking partly to himself and partly to the jungle animal. "I think we shall be good friends, and I will teach you some tricks. Then the boys and girls who come to the circus will want to watch you. Yes, I'll teach you some tricks. Come, let's be friends."