“I remember once, when I lived in the jungle, I hid in a pile of dry grass just like this hay,” thought Tamba. “It was when I wanted to play a trick on my brother Bitie. I jumped out at him and scared him so he ran off with his tail between his legs. Maybe I can jump out and scare this circus man so he won’t want to take me back.”
You see Tamba thought surely it was a circus man coming into the barn whistling. But it wasn’t at all. It was the boy who worked on the farm. His father had sent him to the barn to gather the eggs which the chickens had laid, and this boy, whose name was Tom, nearly always went about his chores whistling.
“I hope I get a lot of eggs to-day,” said Tom, speaking aloud to himself, as he stopped whistling. “Maybe I can get a whole basket full. I’ll look in the hay for them. Hens like to lay their eggs in the hay. It’s a good place for them to hide.”
Now, if that farmer boy had only known it, there was something else hidden in the hay besides hens’ eggs. There was Tamba, the tame tiger. Tamba had worked himself down into a regular nest in the dried grass, and only his eyes peered out. They were very bright and shining eyes, and they watched every move of the farmer boy.
Tamba saw the basket which the boy carried in his hand so he might put the eggs in it, and, seeing this basket, the tame tiger thought to himself:
“Well, if he expects to take me back to the circus in that little basket he’s very much mistaken. Why, it wouldn’t hold two of my paws!”
And then Tamba took a second look, and he saw that the boy was not one of the circus keepers, as the tiger had at first supposed.
“But he whistles just like one,” thought Tamba. “I wonder what he wants.”
So the boy, not knowing anything about the tiger in the hay, walked right toward Tamba, hoping to gather eggs.
In another moment, just as the boy began poking his hand down in the loose hay, hoping to find a hen’s nest full of eggs there, Tamba made up his mind it was time for him to do something.