anything more sublime in the whole world than this performance. Why M. Sohier should be so anxious to warn him against becoming a Lion King when he was so proud of being one, was a mystery to little Jollyman. M. Sohier thought no profession comparable to his own, and no professor of it comparable with himself. In spite of the daily risk he ran, he enjoyed his calling, not merely because it brought him good pay, but because it gave him a daily opportunity of "cutting a dash❞—of proving himself, in theatrical costume, able to do what no other man present durst do.

Whilst he had lain almost at Death's door at Ryecester, although his doctors had forbidden him to talk, he had anxiously inquired of little Jollyman, who brought him the news of the menagerie, whether anybody did the lions and the leopards.

"Mr Smith does the leopards now," the little boy had answered; "but he doesn't do 'em half as well as you, sir—I heard the people saying so."

"A-ha, my leetle boy, my frien' Smit is good

man, ver good-ve cannot all do all tings. Dat is Latin, my leetle boy. I learn Latin. I vas meant to be Catholique priest-vicaire curé, vat you vill; but I prayfair de Hippodrome, and now I am Lion King, and your Reformed godfazer, my leetle godson. M. Smit, have he entered de lions?"

"He got nervous, sir. The folks had made Nero half wild, and Wallace was savage too. He was walking up and down growling and lashing his tail. Barney wanted to go in, but Mr Jollyman wouldn't let him.”

"A-ha, my leetle godson, my good frien' Smit is de vise man, and my frien' Barney is too de vise man. If M. Sholleeman say 'Go,' my frien' Barney no go; but M. Sholleeman say 'No go,' and my frien' Barney praytand dat he vant."

L

CHAPTER IV.

LITTLE JOLLYMAn's pets.

ITTLE Jollyman sometimes kept rabbits;

but when they grew big and fat his surly father used to kill them, and order his wife to make a pie of them, or to stew them with onions: so little Jollyman generally preferred pets not likely to tempt his father's appetite.

He had a little menagerie of paper fly-cages, which he used to arrange in an oblong like Jollyman's, and in which he kept wood-lice, beetles, blue-bottles, caterpillars, moths, lady-birds, grasshoppers, earwigs, glow-worms, dragon-flies, and death-watches.

At different times he had a goldfinch that could draw water for itself in a little bucket, a starling

that could talk, a raven, a couple of blind worms, a lizard, a common snake that would lick his face and eat out of his hand, a bat, a dormouse, a squirrel, a cageful of white-mice, a swarm of fieldmice, a tame rat, three frogs, a toad, a mole, a couple of guinea-pigs, and three or four picklebottles with minnows and sticklebacks and an eft in them.

But beside these pets, which were his own property, little Jollyman had special pets in the cages of the menagerie: three little lion's cubs as fat as butter, that rolled over on their backs and patted the dog that romped with them as playfully as babies; a silver opossum that would curl its tail round his arm, and grab at the bit of bread, or potato, or loaf-sugar he held in his other hand; a deer-eyed wallaby with which he used to wrestle and hop races (always getting beaten in the races) when it was let out of its cage to have a little exercise during the absence of visitors to the show; a cockatoo that rubbed its head against him, when