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Then the lion put his paws through the bars of the cage and scratched Maggo, but the lady elephant did not mind that. She made a loud noise through her trunk, and this call brought the keepers on the run. One of them saw what the matter was. "Quick!" cried this keeper. "The lion's cage door is not fastened. He is trying to get out, but the elephant is holding him in. Quick! Fasten shut the door!"
But this he took care to place far enough away from the tent, so the elephants could not reach over and suck it up in their trunks. "Well, we made a lot of trouble, even though we did not mean to," said Tum Tum to Maggo that evening, when they were cooling off after the show. "But that lemonade tasted good, didn't it?" "It certainly did," said Maggo with a sigh that almost shook the tent.
But Tum Tum could speak only animal language. "But I can stay near the tiger's cage, and when he does get out, I can grab him in my trunk, before he has time to scratch me, and push him back in his cage again," thought Tum Tum. "By that time the keepers will come, and shut the cage doors. Yes, I'll do that with Sharp Tooth; but what about Roarer? I need help there. I'll get Maggo."
"Come on, Roarer!" she called. But Roarer could not, for Maggo, the big elephant, had placed herself in front of the door of his cage, and was leaning against it. And Maggo was so big and heavy that Roarer could not push open the iron-barred door. "Get out of my way!" cried the lion to the elephant. "No, no! I will not!" answered brave Maggo.
Tum Tum's keeper heard the noise the man was making, and came running up. "What is the matter?" asked the circus man. "Oh, yoy! Yoy!" cried the man. "Your elephants took all my pink lemonade, from the washtub where I had ice in it! They sucked it up in their rubber-hose trunks!" "Tum Tum, did you and Maggo do that?" asked the keeper. Tum Tum could not answer, of course.
"Indeed I do," was the answer. "But there is no use wishing." "It doesn't seem so," spoke Maggo, and she fanned herself with her large ears, in a way elephants have. "I wish I had something cool to drink," went on Maggo. "Yes, a nice, cool drink would be just fine," said Tum Tum. "But I do not see where we are going to get it," he went on.
"Some elephants would have done worse than just to squirt water on you." One afternoon it was very hot in the circus. It was so hot that the sides of the animal tent were lowered to let in the air, but, even at that it was not very cool. "Don't you wish we were back in the jungle, near some river, where we could wade in and float until the sun went down?" asked Maggo of Tum Tum.
"That's so," he said, as he saw that the place where Tum Tum used to stand was empty. "I wonder where Tum Tum can be?" said the keeper. Maggo wished she could tell how Tum Tum had tried to stop the tiger from running away, but how the big elephant had not been in time. However, the head keeper must have guessed it. "I don't believe Tum Tum ran away," he said.
We can easily suck it up through our trunks and drink it. Come on, I'll show you how to do it." "Oh, fine!" cried Maggo. Then she and Tum Tum, not thinking it was wrong, put their trunks down in the pink lemonade, and sucked it all out, putting it into their mouths. "Oh, but that's good!" cried Tum Tum, for the lemonade happened to be very sweet. "It certainly is," said Maggo.
"But we can't help it now." "Yes," spoke Maggo. "We can't do anything." Just then the man who owned the lemonade looked up, and saw the trunks of the two elephants sticking out over the top of the tent. The man guessed what had happened. "Ha! They took my lemonade!" the man cried. "They sucked it up through their trunks. Oh, they took my lemonade, and I'll make the circus pay for it!"
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