Well, Tum Tum lived in this jungle, and with him lived his father and mother. His father was a great big elephant, named Tusky, and he was called this because he had two big, long, white teeth, called tusks, sticking out on either side of his long trunk, which was like a fat rubber hose.
Tum Tum's mother was named Mrs. Tusky, but she did not have any long teeth like her husband. Perhaps she had had some once, and had lost them, breaking down a big tree, or something like that.
Tum Tum had no brothers or sisters, but there were other little boy and girl elephants in the herd, or family of elephants, where he lived, and, altogether, he had a good time in the jungle, Tum Tum did.
One day Tum Tum, who had been eating his dinner of leaves, with his father and mother, heard a loud trumpeting in the woods back of where he was standing. Trumpeting is the noise an elephant makes when he blows through his long trunk, or nose. It is his way of speaking to another elephant.
"Who's that calling?" asked Mrs. Tusky, of her husband.
"Oh, it sounds like some of the little boy elephants," said the old papa elephant, as he pulled up a tree by the roots, so he could the more easily take a bite from the tender top leaves.
"I hope it doesn't mean any danger for us," said Mrs. Tusky, looking at Tum Tum, who was busy finishing his dinner.
Elephants, you know, no matter if they are big, are just as much afraid of danger as are other wild animals. Of course they are not so much afraid of the other beasts in the jungles, for the elephant can fight almost anything, even a lion or a tiger.
But an elephant is afraid of the black men, or natives, who live in the jungle, and an elephant is also afraid of the white hunters, who come into the big forest from time to time.
"I hope no hunters are about, to make one of our elephant friends trumpet that way," said Mrs. Tusky, speaking in a way elephants have.