All good things must have an end, and Ben's lunch in the Tower was not any exception to the rule. At last even he was satisfied that nobody would eat any more, although he was very far indeed from being satisfied that they had had enough. "Won't anybody be so good," he said, "as just to try and pick a little bit of something?"
"No—no!" was the general response.
"Indeed, Ben," said Colonel Jeffery, "if we take any more we shall positively be ill, and I'm sure you don't wish that."
"Oh, dear, no," groaned Ben; "but it's quite clear to me, of course, that you don't like the lunch, or else you could not have took it so very easy."
With one accord upon this, everybody declared that they had liked it amazingly well.
"Then you will all try a drop more ale?"
Upon this, they rose from the table, for they had a well-grounded suspicion that if they staid any longer, Ben would try to force something down their throats, whether they would or not.
"Ah, well," said Ben, with a sigh, when he found that they would not be prevailed upon to take anything else. "Then we may as well go and see the lions in the Tower."
"Oh, yes," added Johanna, "I have heard so much of them, that I quite long to see them."
"Should you, my duck?" cried Ben; "then come along."
Here Ben would have carried Johanna again, for somehow he had got the idea fixed in his head that the kindest thing he could possibly do as regarded Johanna was to prevent her from using her feet; but Mark Ingestrie interposed, saying—
"Ben, she would much rather walk. You forget, my kind friend, that she is no longer now a child."
"Oh, dear," said Ben, with a look of profound wisdom, "if you come to that, we are all children. Look at me, I'm only a fine baby."
Everybody laughed at this sally of Ben's, as well they might; and then, being fully convinced that no more eating nor drinking was at all practicable, Ben proceeded to lead the way to the lions.
"Is there any danger?" said Arabella. "I hope you will not let any of them out of their cages, Mr. Ben."
"Oh, dear, no, there's no danger, and we don't let any of them out. We only pokes them up a bit with a long pole, to make 'em rather lively to visitors."
"And have no accidents ever happened?" said Johanna.
"Lord bless you, no. To be sure one of the warders, who was rather a new hand, would put his hand in between the bars of the lion's den and get it snapped off; and once a leopard we had here broke loose, and jumped on the back of a sentinel, and half eat him up; but we haven't had any accidents."
"Why, what do you call them, Ben?"
"Oh, nothing at all."
"I dare say," said Sir Richard Blunt, "that the poor warder and the sentinel would have called those little incidents something."
"Well, perhaps they might," said Ben. "In course people will think of themselves before anybody else; but, howsomdever, don't you be after going to be afeard, my little dears; and if any of the beasteses was to get out, always recollect that easy does it, and it's no use making a fuss."
"I suppose you think, Ben, that if we are to be eaten up by a lion or a leopard, there's no such thing as avoiding our fate," said the colonel. "Is that your idea?"
"Well, I hardly know," said Ben. "But one day we had a young chap—a new warder—who came here out of the country, and he said he had had a dream the night before he came that he should be devoured by a wolf. Now we hadn't a wolf in the Tower collection at all, so, in course, we all laughed at him, and told him he would have to go to foreign parts to bring his dream true. But you'd hardly believe it, that very day afore the young fellow had been one hour in the Tower, there comes a boat to the stairs, with an officer, and he asks to see the keeper of the beasts, and he says to him—'My ship is lying at the Nore, and we have brought from Friesland one of the largest wolves as ever was known for the Tower collection,' says he, 'and he's in a large bag we made on purpose to hold him in the boat.' Well, when the young warder heard this he said—'That's my wolf. He has come for me!' and off he set a trembling like anything. The wolf was brought in in a coal sack, and we got him into an empty den that was shut up with a chain and a staple only; but as all the fastenings were out of his reach, he could not interfere with it if he was ever so cunning. Well, night came, and we all took it easy, and went to bed; but in the middle of the night what should we hear but the most horrid howling that ever you could think of, and when we ran to the Lion Tower, where it came from, we found the iron door of the wolf's den open, and the young warder lying, half in and half out of it, stone dead. The wolf had had him by the throat."
"And what became of the wolf?" said Johanna.
"He was gone, and we never so much as heard of him from that day to this."
"Well, Ben," said the colonel, "that is a very good story of the lions in the Tower, and here we are, I think, close to them."
A terrific roar at this moment proved the colonel's words to be tolerably true.
"Ah, they are feeding some on 'em," said Ben. "It just the time, and they will not be convinced as easy does it."
"It is hard enough, Ben," said Sir Richard Blunt, "to convince human beings of that piece of philosophy, to say nothing of lions and tigers."
"Oh, but," said Ben, with great gravity, "lions and tigers is generally much more reasonable than human beings."
Another roar from the menagerie joined in as bass to the laugh with which this piece of philosophy from so unlikely a person as Ben was received.
"Come on," he said; "come on. They can make a noise, but that's just about all they can do. Come on, my little dears—and if you fell at all afeard, all you have got to do is to take hold of the lion by the nose, and then you'll find he looks upon you as one of them as takes things easy, and he won't say another w............