"Oh, ho! Now I understand!" said the trainer. "My lion must have smelled the rotten apple and didn't like it. He tried to scare away the boy, I guess."
"Well, the boy was scared all right," said a man. "He ran away as fast as he could go."
"He ought to!" said the trainer very sharply.
The excitement, caused by the loud roaring of Nero, was over now, though, for a time, many persons had been frightened, for Nero had sent his powerful voice rumbling through the circus tent as his father, and the other big lions, had used to make the ground tremble when they roared in the jungle.
Then, as things grew quiet and the people passed along the row of cages, looking at the animals, Tum Tum, who heard what had happened, turned to Nero and said:
"I'm much obliged to you, my dear lion friend, for scaring the boy who wanted to give me the rotten apple. Most likely, as soon as I'd have taken it in my trunk, I'd have smelled that it was bad, and I would not have eaten it. But some one might have given me a popcorn ball in my trunk at the same time, and that might have smelled so good that I wouldn't have noticed the rotten apple until too late. So you saved me from having a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm much obliged to you."
"Oh, that's all right," replied Nero. "I'm glad I could do you a favor. You have been kind to me, pushing my cage around, and I want to be kind to you."
So the two circus animals were better friends than ever, and that day in the performers' tent Nero opened his mouth very wide indeed when his trainer wanted to put in his head.
For many weeks Nero traveled about the country with the circus, living in his iron-barred cage, from which he was never taken. Nero might be a tame lion, but the circus folk did not think it would be safe to let him out, as Dido, the dancing bear, was allowed to come out of his cage.
However, later on, something happened—