CHAPTER X
NERO RUNS AWAY
Once more Nero roared as he looked over the heads of the crowd to see what had become of the boy who had tried to give Tum Tum the rotten apple.
"Hold on there, my lion boy! What's the matter? Don't do that!" called Nero's trainer to him in a kind voice. "What happened, anyhow? Why are you roaring so, and trying to get out of your cage? Don't you like it here in the circus?"
Nero stopped roaring at once, and no longer dashed against the bars of his cage. Perhaps he thought that, as long as his kind trainer was at hand, everything would be all right.
"Did some one try to hurt my lion friend?" asked the trainer, looking at the crowd near the cage.
"No," some one answered. "But the lion, all at once, tried to reach out and claw a boy who was going to give an apple to an elephant. I saw that. I don't know what made the lion act so."
"There must have been some good reason," said the trainer. "Nero is a good lion. He wouldn't want to claw a boy just for fun."
And then one of the other boys, who was in the crowd that had been around the lad who had the rotten apple, spoke up and said:
"Mister, Jimmie was going to play a trick on the elephant. He was going to give him a bad apple just to see what a funny face the elephant would make."