“Ha! I’ve found a good way to play a trick on Nero!” laughed Tamba. “I’ll keep on tickling him!”
He waved his tail to and fro, Tamba did, and once again he let the tip of it touch Nero’s nose. The sleeping lion raised his paw, and brushed it over his face. He must have thought some bug was crawling on his nose.
“Oh, this is lots of fun!” thought Tamba. So it was, for him. But was it fun for Nero?
“Now for a good tickle!” thought Tamba, as, once again, he put his tail over toward the sleeping lion’s nose. And this time something was going to happen.
CHAPTER IV
TAMBA IN A WRECK
Down on the black nose of the sleeping lion went the soft, fuzzy tip of Tamba’s tail. And Tamba tickled Nero so hard that the lion gave a big sneeze and awakened with a jump.
Then Nero threw himself against the bars of his cage until they shook where they were fastened into the wood, and the lion roared in his loudest voice:
“Where’s that fly? Where’s the tickling fly that wouldn’t let me sleep? If I catch that fly I’ll tickle him!” and Nero roared so loudly that the ground seemed to tremble, as it always does near a lion when he roars. I have often felt it in the zoölogical park where I sometimes go to look at the lions and the tigers.