THE WEE BEAR’S BIRTHDAY PARTY
“Pray, what do you have for servants?” asked the Donkey, as they
crossed a brook and struck up a little hill.
“Coons,” the Bear replied. “They make the best.”
“If they weren’t so lazy and shiftless,” said the Donkey.
“They _are_ lazy,” the Bear admitted. “I have to keep poking them up
all the time; but it doesn’t do much good.”
“I shouldn’t think you would need six servants,” Buddie spoke up. What
could a bear without a family want with so many?
“Well, I _hired_ only one,” said the Bear, “and he got five others to
do the work. He won’t do a thing himself; though he does condescend to
wait on table when there’s company.”
“He must get pretty high wages to be able to hire five assistants,”
remarked the Donkey.
“Oh, he doesn’t _pay_ them anything. He just boards and sleeps them--at
my expense.” The Bear sighed in a resigned sort of way. Evidently the
case was hopeless.
“I wouldn’t stand it!” Buddie declared. It was a shame to impose on
such good nature.
“I have to grin and bear it,” was the reply. “That’s the motto of our
family: Grin and Bear It.”
“And a very good motto it is,” said the Donkey. “Now, you never see a
bear without a grin.”
“So Doctor Goose says,” said the Bear. “He claims the bear came first
and the grin afterward. But Doctor Fox claims the grin came first.
Otherwise, he says, the motto would be, Bear and Grin It.”
“What difference does it make?” said Buddie.
“Not a mite, that I can see,” said the Bear. “I have to grin, and I
have to bear it. But to hear Doctor Fox and Doctor Goose go on, you
would think it was the most important matter in the world. Here we are.”
[Illustration]
The Bear drew aside a bush that screened the entrance to a cave, and
called out:
“Sam! O Sam! Where are you, Sam?”
A sound of shuffling feet came from the interior, and presently
the Oldest Coon made his appearance, rubbing his eyes as if he had
just wakened from a nap. But at sight of the Donkey and Buddie he
straightened up and put on an air of great dignity.
“Step this way, please,” he said with a grand bow, and led the way
inside.
First was a long and dimly-lighted corridor, which ended, the Bear
said, in a reception-room. From this came a clatter of small talk,
and Buddie was curious to learn who the talkers were; but before they
reached the reception-room, the Oldest Coon bowed them into a smaller
apartment that opened off the corridor. This, the Bear informed them,
was his den.
“You can hang up your hat and wraps here,” he said to Buddie.
“But I haven’t any hat and wraps,” said she; “and it’s just as well,
as I don’t see any place to hang them.” For there wasn’t a stick of
furniture in the room or a hook on the wall.
“It’s certainly a _bear_ place,” said the Donkey, hee-hawing at his own
joke.
“I mean to have a hall-tree,” the Bear apologized; “but I can’t decide
on the kind to get. Doctor Goose advises birch, but Doctor Fox claims
poplar is the best. All the newest things, he says, are _poplar_.”
“What’s a hall-tree?” inquired Buddie. There was no such thing in her
home.
“A hall-tree,” the Donkey explained, “is a tree that grows in the hall,
just as a shade-tree is a tree that grows in the shade. The trouble
with birch and poplar”--turning to the Bear--“is that they grow so fast
you have to keep lopping them off, unless your hall is very high, and
this one isn’t.”
“I must see about those thistles,” said the Bear, and hurried away. But
he was back in a moment. “I forgot to tell you we dress for dinner,” he
said, and was off again.
“I always carry a dinner-coat with me,” said the Donkey, and from one
of his saddle-bags he drew out a remarkable jacket in red and green
checks, embroidered all over with Scotch thistles.
“I forgot to say,” said the Bear, again poking his head inside the den,
“it’s to be a birthday dinner.”
“Whose?” cried Buddie. But the Bear was out of hearing. “Let me help
you,” she said to the Donkey, who was making such awkward work of
getting into his dinner-coat that she scarcely could keep from laughing.
“Thank you,” he replied. “It _is_ a little hard to manage. How do I
look? There isn’t a glass in the room.”
“Very fine indeed,” Buddie assured him. And then it suddenly occurred
to her that _she_ had no dinner-coat, and she wondered what she should
do.
“Pooh!” said the Donkey. “_You’re_ dressed already. Shall we go in?”
The Oldest Coon was waiting at the entrance to the reception-room to
announce them.
“Professor Bray!” he called out pompously, as the Donkey passed in.
“Your name, please?”--turning to Buddie.
“Just Buddie,” she replied in a whisper.
“Just Buddie!” announced the Oldest Coon. And Buddie found herself in
a large high room, almost round, in which was assembled as queer a
company, Little One, as ever you saw in a picture-book, or out. The one
familiar face was that of the Rabbit. He wore a white cut-away coat and
a large pink cravat, and he was talking to a Little Small Wee Bear, who
was dressed in a blue reefer, with a sash of the same color. And Buddie
guessed it was the Wee Bear’s birthday party, as all the other guests
were grouped about her and paying her many small attentions.
The other guests were a Middle Bear (who, as Buddie afterward learned,
was the mother of the Wee Bear and the sister of the Great Huge Bear),
a Porcupine, an Owl and a Loon. The Middle Bear wore a long linen
duster, which didn’t fit her any too well, and the Owl a snug-fitting
jersey of what looked suspiciously like mouse-skin; the Loon wore a
tightly-fitting mackintosh, and the Porcupine had decided on an Eton
jacket as an appropriate dress for dinner.
[Illustration]
“I wonder how he ever got that on over his quills,” Buddie said to
herself. She had seen porcupines before. They came lumbering round
the log house in the most sociable way, and chewed up ax-handles,
barn-doors and other woody delicacies. And Buddie recalled one exciting
day when Colonel came home with his nose and mouth filled with quills.
How he did howl when her father pulled them out with a pair of pincers!
Buddie wished she might slip into a corner and watch the others; but
the Rabbit came hurrying over to introduce her to the company, and
presently Buddie found herself telling the Wee Bear she was ever so
glad to meet her, and the Wee Bear was telling her, in return, that she
was just one year old and was having _such_ a nice birthday party.
“Do you go to kindergarten?” asked the Wee Bear.
Now, would you believe it, Little One? Buddie had never even heard the
word before, and the Middle Bear had to explain that a kindergarten
was a place where children were taught, without their knowing it, the
most remarkable things. Wee Bears were taught to eat honey; rabbits, to
hold up their ears when listening intently; squirrels, to crack nuts,
and so on. The fishes took the water course, and learned from a wise
old Trout how to breathe under water and how to move their fins. For
the feathered tribe there was a venerable Bat, who gave instruction in
twigonometry and all the other branches of treeology.
“There were no kindergartens when I was young,” concluded the Middle
Bear, “and I have often wondered how I managed to learn the way to eat
honey.”
“This week,” chimed in the Wee Bear, “I am learning to pick
blueberries.”
“The best of it is,” said the Middle Bear, “these nature studies take
the little ones out of doors, where there is plenty of fresh air and
sky.”
Just then Buddie discovered that the Porcupine, who was sitting beside
the Wee Bear, had quills as soft and silky as the fur on a kitten’s
back.
“He’s a Fretless Porcupine,” said the Middle Bear, when she whispered
that she had never seen quills of that sort before. “He never frets, no
matter what happens.”
Buddie did not see what fretting had to do with quills; and before she
had a chance to inquire, the Donkey came along to pay his respects to
the Wee Bear and her mother.
As Buddie was not used to “going out in company,” she hardly knew
what to say, other than “Yes” or “No,” when some one of the guests
addressed a question to her, which wasn’t often. Fortunately they paid
very little attention to her, so she was able to sit and listen to the
chatter around her.
Not so the Donkey. He moved about with the ease of one accustomed to
polite society, dropping a compliment here and a joke there, wishing
the Wee Bear many happy returns of the day, and congratulating the
Rabbit on the fit of his coat.
“I hope they’ll have dinner soon,” Buddie thought. “I’m dreadfully
hungry.”
She could hear a bustle in the room she took to be the kitchen; and
presently she caught sight of one of the Coons struggling into it with
a big basket of Scotch thistles.
“There goes _your_ dinner,” she whispered to the Donkey. “Now, perhaps,
they’ll ring the bell.”
“They’re waiting for Doctor Fox and Doctor Goose,” said the Donkey.
At that moment loud voices were heard in the hall. As they came nearer
Buddie caught such phrases as “I deny it,” “Nothing of the sort,” “The
grin came first,” “Stuff and nonsense!”--all jumbled up together; and
the two Doctors came into the room.
A queer-looking pair they were: both wore long black coats and tall
hats, and on the nose of each (provided, of course, that a goose has a
nose) was a pair of spectacles. Doctor Goose was waving his wings and
Doctor Fox his paws, and both were talking at the tops of their voices.
[Illustration]
“They’re at it again,” said the Great Huge Bear, who had followed them
in.
“I say the bear came first,” shouted Doctor Goose.
“Nothing of the sort,” shouted Doctor Fox. “The grin--”
The controversy was happily interrupted by the Oldest Coon, who thrust
his head inside the room and bawled out:
“_Dinner!_”