On a warm afternoon on the vast savannah, Leo the Lion sat gazing across the tall grasses. He saw the many animals that scurried or sauntered their way through the wild expanse and sighed. He was happy, as lions usually are, but he was lonely food never was a problem for Leo, but friends were.
In his little heart of hearts, Leo wanted to make friends with the other animals of the savannah. When spring came and the grass was green and sweet, he tried to make friends with a little old hare. “Oh, won’t you come and play with me and be friends?” roared Leo in the mildest tone of voice he could command, and he stopped close in front of the hare.
“Please don’t come any nearer,” said the trembling little beast, looking up with tearful eyes. “I am much obliged to you for your kindness, but I am afraid I might be your dinner!” And with that the little hare bounded away.
Leo’s tender heart was very sad at this, for he was afraid the hare was right, after all, and he might eat the little fellow up before he had any idea what he was doing. He lay down and cried.
One fine morning a Robin Redbreast flew boldly down and began to sing sweetly in front of Leo, who was for the time being deep in thought. “I am going to put a question to you, little feathered brother,” said Leo: “Why is it that no one will be my friend?”
The Robin tilted his head on one side and looked straight into Leo’s eyes, and then he chirped out: “Do you really wish it from the bottom of your heart?”
“Really and truly,” sobbed Leo. “I would do anything to have a friend.”
Then the Robin flew up into the air and turned several somersaults, and suddenly dashed off in estatic joy.
The next day he returned and called from a distance and asked Leo to come and talk to him. Leo stretched his long limbs to see whether he was all cracked to pieces, for he had not slept well, and, after a hearty breakfast of meat, he went over to where the Robin was.
“Is it really true that you want a friend so very much?” asked the Robin again when they had met.
“Do I not look it?” cried Leo. “A lion’s heart can suffer also. Yes, I want a friend, and I want him very much. Can’t you come and tell the other animals that I will not hurt them?”
The Robin thought for awhile. Then he said: “Little Rabbit is the best according to her size. If you will promise me most faithfully that you will not eat her up, even if she does come to see you, I will go and tell her to come at once.”
“I will by all that is good, indeed I will,” replied Leo, and then he waited, and he nearly cried while the Robin was gone.
First the Rabbit came, who was as shy as could be, and peeped round the rocks and froze at every little sound; next a Rook came, holding his head like a king, and looking all about to see who was there; after that a little Partridge with two tiny chicks came on hand in hand, until twelve animals, birds and beasts, were sitting round Leo’s rock. Leo looked at them all with tearful eyes, then he said in the gentlest way he could command: “I am very unhappy. I want a friend so much I don’t know what to do, and when I said word to ask you all to come here the Robin thought that perhaps if you knew that I wanted a friend as much as I did, you might promise that none of you will be afraid of me, and perhaps someone will become my friend. Of course, if you all dislike me, I don’t think I shall care to live; but I am quite sure if you really knew me, you never, never would be unhappy. You know, for instance, that I am a meat-eater by nature, and I am far too proud a beast to eat grass; but there is no reason why I shouldn’t learn to dislike it. Some friends now and again will, of course, give me meat, and others, little by little, will try to be my friend, and none would have a noble heart more grateful each day: you cannot think how miserable I am. I always want to come nearer to you, but the moment I expect you to come nearer to me, you all escape so far away I can hardly see you. Won’t anyone come and be my friend? Oh, do some of you or one of you come, and try to be my friend, and if you like it, there is no reason why you shouldn’t come and be my friend the next day, and the next, and so on.”
All the animals were talking together, and at last the Hare, the first to refuse Leo’s overture, said: “Well, I have always heard, you know, that it is better to give than to receive. I will therefore go to Leo and say I will be his friend.”
“But what will you do all the day?” chirped a fly, who hopped past their circuitous route, hardly knowing it was to annoy them. “What a dull life she must lead after lunch when Leo is napping!”
But shortly after the compassionate Rabbit stepped noiselessly along the route and said: “Don’t you think you were rather rude to an old friend?”
The Fly turned round and spoke in the same general way as before; but the answer Leo gave him really did put him off altogether: “Well,” said the Lion, yawning again, “you know, it is better to give than to receive.”
A day passed, two days passed, a week went by, and Leo grew more and more unhappy. Then, for a change, he swung to and fro, and roared out louder than usual. “All the lions in Africa could not have made a greater noise than did Leo at this time, it really frightened all the animals of the savannah away.”
One day, however, the Rooks, who still wanted to know the end of the Lion’s story, all met together and said: “Is there really no one among us who will go to Leo and listen to him, so that we need not be rude to a fellow animal? I will go,” said one of them at once, and although he initially felt shy of walking with Leo, he really very soon got to love him.
Chat with the other birds, beasts, and creeping things cheered Leo up again wonderfully. He no longer lay on his rocky sofa all day and put his poor little head on one side and asked himself if he were a bad Lion only because he wanted a friend; but with the warmth of feeling that Mother Nature inspires in an open air humoured brain, he felt he was a strong hearted King of Beasts after all, even if sometimes he got into bad ways of thinking.
Months passed, and at last old years dropped step by step behind one another. Father and son together walked on this side. There was more scathed than consumed suffering produced by negativism. The new Lion cub had a sly lazy semblance to what you have seen photographed on earth, human interest as it were, still Leo still lived happily with the twelve friends all around him.
One evening Leo discovered it was growing very late by the tints in the sky, and he leapt to a stone in front of him to get a better view; suddenly, in horror, he saw the great sun carving deep pink each evening behind the purple hills, and he would not put a question to Walker. He gathered all his friends about him, and without saying a word to the surprisingly numerous company told him all the bars he had and all he wanted.
One day it was told him, “We are soon to deliver a prisoner over to the men in a penitentiary whom she hates; they take her back into that very water alone, where the hands grow black and the head white and pass food long before they touch her ears. Pray accompany us, and see if anything can be done.”
Most willingly Leo agreed to go, driving away uncomfortable thoughts, and keeping as near to his tenth friend, the hare, as he could.
The animals arrived excited in a neighbouring grove as the sun was sinking, but Leo’s heart sank lower even than the horizon, for by the pleasant warm tint it saw so well by it knew it did away with all mists.
Still Leo rushed up to wave his male friends and all in any way necessary.
He sat down explicitly on the bridge and called out in his thunderous tones: “Take care: you help her man halter the blindfold round her hind stay, and listen; she is innocent.”
“Of what?” came out of the hollow sack.
“Of eating meat,” replied Leo.
“I am satisfied,” said the prisoner.
“Haha! then we shall eat meat all,” leapt in not showing by snapping her jaws the double extinction of a lion and a cow a moment after appeared above the surface.
“Have you been teased by the beetles? rumbled the Pinery woman.
“You don’t know half,” bellowed Leo.
“Iavaarast.”
That is, “Humming,” she replied, and Leo hunting through the sombre sea found an unremembered eagle and hawk were awaiting the evening throw. Another moat, liquid and on the whole not exactly ennuyé sort you could fathom if you never took to it; and the woman’s reply answered all the League was wanting.
Many times when half behind Lion went down the side of the depths even at either end, but evening after evening one or other resumed or growing out of the restraint in which at first it thought they were really stretched. But nothing came of her sojourn, for seeing as presently all twelve animals, between possible bad news for the best of news were breaking eating heartily. Now that they must not wait longer than they required for sunshine.
At nightfall to their eyes they had so arranged your memory, which you always held by or hammered fellows were similar enough to tell, a capital piece of work for the first night was approached as throwing a meal against the Law was closely watched by absolutely all.
On the fifth day instead of lunch they started hard with Rookery and witchcraft under supervision; and nothing remained for their livelihood as fine sudorific ease, as most like afternoon tunes.