Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/253

 "Then it was a lion!" gasped Pinkie, triumphantly.

"Quick as a wink I could see why all those men had scooted out. It was one of the lions got loose from the circus tent, a real Assinian lion!"

"An Abyssinian lion!" corrected Lionel Clarence.

"I always shorten it up, to save time," said the explicit historian, testily.

"Well, go on," said Jappie Barrison.

"I stood there facin' that lion, wonderin' what to do, when I saw him kind o' hunch up and get ready to spring. I was n't exactly scart; I was just mad at bein' stopped on my way home, when Pop told me to hustle. So, as I saw that lion was gettin' ready to jump, I just up with my package of pepper, and let him have it square in the nose!"

A murmur of surprise ran around the little circle.

Lonely laughed dreamily at the memory of the episode, absent-mindedly testing his kite-string as he went on.

"How that old lion did r'ar up! I jumped off to one side, just as he made his spring. It came