"Sit on your stool!"
So, though of course Nero could not understand what the circus men said when they talked to one another, the lion had learned some words. So he could talk and understand animal language, and he could also understand some words of man-talk. And that is pretty good, I think, for a lion who had not been out of the jungle quite a year.
"Shall we have to push any of the cages?" asked Nero of his friend Leo, as they both watched the circus men hurrying to and fro in the big barn.
"Oh, no," answered the older lion. "They never let us out of the cages."
"And a good reason, too," declared a humpy camel, near by. "If they let you lions and tigers out of the cages, you'd run away. We wouldn't do that. We camels are well-behaved, like the horses and the elephants."
Leo, the old lion, shook his head until his mane dangled in his eyes.
"No," he said, "if they opened my cage, I wouldn't run away. I wouldn't even go out, unless it was to get something to eat and come right back again."
"I would!" growled Nero. "I'd go out in a minute, if they opened my cage door wide enough. I'd go out and run back to the jungle."
"Yes, that's what I used to think, at first," growled Leo. "But after you've been in the circus awhile you get used to it. It's home to you.
"Why, I remember, Nero, we once had in this circus a lion just about like you. He always said he'd run away if he got the chance. Well, one day his cage was left open by accident, and he ran away."