“Why do you call him a ‘poor old lion’?  I think he must be a very savage fellow.”

“Oh, I think he’ll turn out to be a gentle one,” said her husband with a laugh.

Then Mr. and Mrs. Brown went to bed, after Uncle Tad had heard the story, and the rest of the night passed quietly.  At the breakfast table Bunny and Sue were told of what had happened.

Bunny wanted to go right out with Uncle Tad, who was to take his gun.

“We’ll hunt him and get the twenty-five dollars,” said the little fellow.

“No.  You’d better play around here for a while,” ordered his father.  “It will be safer.”

“I wouldn’t let him out of my sight for a million dollars!” cried Mrs. Brown.

“But we could take the two dogs, Dix and Splash, with us, and they could bite the lion if he chased us,” said Bunny.

His mother shook her head, and Bunny knew there was no use teasing any more.

“I wouldn’t go after any lion!” declared Sue.  “And I want to find a good place to hide Sallie Malinda.”

“What for?” asked Bunny.

“So the lion can’t find her,” said the little girl.  “Lions don’t like bears and this one might bite Sallie Malinda.  Then maybe she couldn’t flash her eyes any more.”  The Teddy bear had dried out after the fall into the lake, and was as good as ever.

So Bunny and Sue had to stay and play around the automobile, not going far away.  Though at first they missed the long tramps in the fields and through the woods, they were good children and did as they were bid.  Besides, deep down in his heart, Bunny was just a little bit afraid of the lion, even though he had said he wanted to go hunting for him with Uncle Tad.

Two days passed, and the lion had not been found.  The circus had gone on, leaving two men in the town near which the automobile was stranded.  These men, with a spare cage which had been left with them, were ready to go out with nets and ropes and capture the lion as soon as any one should bring in word as to where it was hiding.

The countrymen and the boys, who had no other work to do, still kept up the lion hunt, some with dogs, but the big circus animal was well hidden.

“If he was playing hide-and-go-seek,” said Bunny, “I’d holler ’Givie-up!  Givie-up!  Come on in free!’ For I never could find him, he has hidden himself so good.”

“Well, I wish he would go and hide himself far, far away,” almost snapped Sue.  “Then we could go around like we used to, and go on the lake.”

“I wish so too,” agreed Bunny.

It was getting rather tiresome for the children to stay so close to “home,” as they called the automobile, but Mr. Brown said the new spring would arrive in a few days, and then they would travel on again, far from where the lion was hiding.

“And we can keep on looking for Fred Ward,” said Bunny.  In the excitement over the circus the runaway boy had been almost forgotten.