“I declare! I don’t know what’s the matter with Tamba,” said Tum Tum one day. “He doesn’t seem at all happy any more. Dido, do some of your funny dances and see if you can’t cheer up Tamba!”
So the dancing bear did some of his tricks, capering about in his cage, but Tamba would hardly look at him. Some boys, though, who had come to the circus, gathered in front of the bear’s cage and laughed and laughed at his funny antics. They liked Dido. The boys liked to look at Tamba, also, but they were a little afraid of the big, striped tiger.
One day, when the afternoon performance was over, and Tamba, Nero and the other animals who had done their tricks in the big tent were brought back to the smaller one, where they were kept between the times of the shows, Nero said:
“Now I am going to lie down and sleep, and please don’t any one wake me up. I’m tired, for I did a new trick to-day, and it was very hard, and I want to rest so I can do better in the show to-night. So everybody let me alone.”
“We will,” said Tum Tum, the jolly elephant.
Now the lion is called the “King of Beasts,” and in the jungle he comes pretty near to being that, for all the other animals, except perhaps the elephant, are afraid of him.
So when a lion says he wants a thing done, it generally is done. Of course Nero could not have got out of his circus cage to make the other animals do what he wanted them to do, but most of them made up their minds that they wouldn’t bother him, even though they knew he couldn’t hurt them. Nero was still “King” in a way.
But that day Tamba was cross. Or perhaps I might say he felt as though he wanted to “cut up.” He wanted to play some tricks, make some excitement. He wanted to do something!
I dare say you have seen your dog or cat act the same way. For days at a time they may be very quiet, eating and sleeping and doing only the things they do every day. And then, all at once, they will begin to race about and “cut up.” Your dog may run away with your cap, and, no matter how many times you call him, he’ll just caper about and bark, or perhaps pretend to come near you and then run off again. And your cat may dig her claws into the carpet, jump up on the window sill and knock down a plant or a flower vase, and do all sorts of things like that.
Well, this is just the way Tamba felt that day. He wanted to do something, and when he saw Nero sleeping so quietly in his cage the tame tiger made up his mind to play a trick on the lion.