her voice choked.
“Oh, don’t be a cry-baby!” said Neddie. “Come on!”
“Oh, but it’s dark!” objected Beckie.
“The moon will soon be up,” said her brother.
On and on through the woods they went, and soon the moon did come up.
Then it was lighter. On and on went the two bear children; when, all of
a sudden, they heard a noise in the bushes.
“What’s that?” asked Beckie, sliding close up to her brother.
“I—I don’t know,” he whispered. And just then, through the woods, they
heard a sound like this:
“Ta-ra! Ta-ra-ta! Ta-ra-ta! Ta-ra-ta! Toot! Toot!”
“Come on!” cried Neddie, joyfully. “There is the trained bear man. Now
we are all right,” and holding tightly to Beckie’s paw he raced on
through the woods toward the bugle sound.
And what happened next, and what Neddie and Beckie did when they found
the trained bear and his master, I’ll tell you on the next page, when
the story will be about Neddie and Beckie up a pole—that is I will if
the letter-carrier doesn’t put a clothespin on our little doggie’s tail
and mail him away off where he can’t go to the moving picture show in
our cellar.
STORY VII
NEDDIE AND BECKIE CLIMB A POLE
When Neddie and Beckie Stubtail, the two little bear children, had run
away from home, as I told you in the story before this one, and had come
to the woods where they heard the horn blowing, they did not know just
what to do.
“That,” said Beckie, as she held her doll, Mary Ann Puddingstick
Clothespin, tightly in her arms, “that surely must be the kind man who
has the trained bear with the ring in his nose. Now we are safe and we
will get many good things to eat, Neddie.”
“We had better take a peep before we run out from behind this bush,”
said Neddie, slow and careful like. “Perhaps it is some other man with a
horn, trying to fool us.”
You know the bear children had met in the woods, one day, a nice, kind
trained bear, and with him was a man called the Professor, who led the
bear around by a rope, fast to a ring in the bear’s nose. And the
trained bear did tricks, such as turning somersaults and standing on his
head, while the man collected, in his hat, pennies that people tossed to
him.
The trained bear invited Neddie to travel around with him, promising
that he would have popcorn and other good things to eat, but at first
Neddie was afraid of the man with the brass horn.
So he ran home; but the more Neddie thought of it the more he wanted to
run away and become a traveling trained bear. So he got his sister
Beckie to go with him, and away they ran in the evening, leaving their
home and their papa and mamma; and Aunt Piffy, the fat bear lady, and
Uncle Wigwag, and Mr. Whitewash, the polar bear, and all their friends.
Then they came to the woods and heard the brass trumpet blowing, as I
have told you.
“Can you see anything?” asked Beckie, as she looked over her brother’s
head, while he was peering through the holes in a bramble bush.
“Not yet,” answered Neddie. Just then there came another blast on the
brass trumpet, and Neddie cried:
“Oh, yes! There he is!” And then Beckie saw the tame bear with the ring
in his nose, instead of in an ear where some ladies wear theirs, and
with the tame bear was the man with the long pole.
“Now, George,” the man was saying, “I guess we’ll go to sleep, and in
the morning we’ll do some more tricks and get more pennies. Whoop-la!
There’s your supper, George!”
“I guess it’s time for us to run out now,” said Neddie to his sister,
when he heard the word supper.
“Yes,” said Beckie, “I guess it is.” You see it was really after supper
time, and Beckie and Neddie had eaten theirs before they ran away from
home. But running away makes you hungry, whether you’ve had supper or
not, I suppose.
Out ran the two bear children, and Beckie especially was very glad they
had found the tame bear, for it was getting real late, and, though the
moon was shining brightly, still she wanted company.
“Hello, what’s this!” cried the man with the pole, as he saw Neddie and
Beckie running toward him. “More bears! Are they going to bite me?”
“Oh, no!” quickly answered the trained bear, “I know who they are. One
of them is a friend of mine whom I met in the woods the other day. I
invited him to come with me, and I see he has brought his sister.
Perhaps you would like to train them to do tricks.”
“Ha! I think I would,” said the man. “They might do tricks very nicely
with you. I’ll have a regular bear family,” and he pulled some pieces of
dried bread out of a bag on his arm, and, taking some himself, he gave
the rest to the trained bear.
“If you please,” said Neddie, making a polite bow, so low that his
little tail almost pointed to the sky. “If you please, did we hear you
mention supper?”
“You did,” answered the man. “It is supper time for me and George—rather
late, it is true, but still supper time. My bear’s name is George,” he
added. “Eat your supper, George.”
“I am eating it,” said the trained bear, speaking in his own language,
which the man understood, and spoke also. Not many men can speak bear
language, but this one could because his head was all bare. He was a
bald-headed man, and they can mostly always speak a bear language.
“But what about something to eat for us?” asked Beckie.
“Yes,” added Neddie, “we’re hungry, and you know, George,” he said,
speaking to the trained bear, “you said something about popcorn and cake
and lollypops—”
“I know I did,” answered the trained bear, sort of confused like and
puzzled, as he ate his dried bread. “But I didn’t mean I had popcorn
every day.”
“I should say not!” exclaimed the man, whose name was Professor. “The
idea! I’d soon be in the poorhouse if I gave George popcorn every day.
That’s only for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or the like. But you are
welcome to some dried bread.”
Then he gave Neddie and Beckie some bread from the bag, and the two bear
children had to take it. They did not like it very much, but it was the
best they could get, and they were hungry.
“Running away isn’t as nice as staying home,” whispered Beckie to her
brother, after she had put her doll to sleep under some dried leaves.
“Oh, well, it will be nice to-morrow,” spoke Neddie. “And, anyhow, it
will be Thanksgiving in a couple of days, and then we’ll have plenty of
good things to eat.”
“I wonder where we will sleep?” went on Beckie. “I don’t see any nice
cave-house, such as we have at home.”
“I should say not!” cried Neddie. “You don’t live in a house after
you’ve run away. The idea! We’ll live out of doors, and we won’t have to
wash our faces and paws when we don’t want to.”
“I never mind doing that, anyhow,” said Beckie, who was a very clean
little bear.
Well, Neddie and Beckie finished their dried bread, and they wished they
had some buns, or maybe even some ice cream, for all I know, and then
the man said:
“Well, it is not so very late, and there is a nice moon, so I think I
will see if you little new bears can do any tricks. Come now, climb that
pole!” and he pointed to a telegraph pole growing in the woods.
“Oh, we can’t climb that,” said Neddie, quickly.
“Why not?” asked the man with the bald head. “You must climb it if you
are to be trick-trained bears.”
“Why, the pole is too smooth and slippery,” said Beckie. “It has no
branches sticking out to take hold of, as a tree has.”
“Pooh! That’s nothing. George can climb the pole,” said his master.
“Show ’em how, George.”
“All right, Professor,” said George, free and easy like, and up the pole
he went, like a jumping-jack on a string.
Then Neddie tried it, but he slipped back, and so did Beckie. They had
not yet learned how to stick their claws in the smooth telegraph pole,
and hold on.
“I’m afraid you’ll never be trick bears,” said the Professor. “I must
teach you to climb a pole. We’ll try it again to-morrow.”
But Neddie and Beckie did not wait until next day. All of a sudden, out
from under a bush, came the biggest skillery-scalery alligator the bear
children had ever seen. Right for Beckie and Neddie the ’gator came, and
Neddie cried:
“Come on, Beckie! Up the pole we go and then he can’t get us!”
“Let me go first! Let me go first!” cried Beckie, and Neddie did, most
politely. And, before they knew it, those two bear children had climbed
the smooth telegraph pole they never thought they could scale, and the
’gator could not get them.
What do you think of that?
Then George and the Professor drove the bad alligator away, not being
the least bit afraid of him or his tail either, for that matter, and the
man called:
“You may come down now, Beckie and Neddie. At last you have learned to
climb a pole, though it did take the alligator to make you. You will
never forget it. Come down, and go to sleep, and in the morning we will
travel on.”
So Beckie and Neddie came down the pole, and curled up in the soft warm
leaves to sleep, glad enough that they had on thick fur coats, for the
weather was very cold. And soon they were safe in by-low land.
And now, if the church steeple doesn’t reach up and tickle the clouds so
that they giggle and let a lot of rain fall on my umbrella, I’ll tell
you next about Neddie doing a trick.
STORY VIII
NEDDIE DOES A TRICK
Neddie and Beckie Stubtail, the little children bears, did not sleep
very well the first night they ran away from home to become trained
animals. There were several reasons for this.
In the first place they had to sleep out of doors, and not in their own
nice cave-house. And then, too, their papa and mamma were not with them.
“It—it’s lonesome,” whispered Beckie, waking up in the dark and putting
out her paw to touch her brother. “Oh, Neddie, I wish I’d stayed home!”
“Hush! Go to sleep!” advised Neddie, kindly. “You’ll wake up George, the
trained bear, and the Professor man if you talk.”
“Are they asleep?” whispered Beckie, feeling down in the leaves to see
if her doll, Mary Ann Puddingstick Clothespin, was all right.
“Sure they’re asleep,” answered Neddie. “Hear ’em snore?”
And, truly enough, you could hear that bear George snore as real as
anything, honestly you could. What? You didn’t know bears snored? Well,
did you ever sleep near one? I guess not! So, you see, you can’t tell.
But I can.
“And it will soon be morning,” went on Neddie, “and then, maybe, we’ll
travel on and on, and not have any lessons to do, and we may get buns
and popcorn.”
“Yes, the trained bear did mention about buns,” said Beckie, and then,
thinking of sweet buns and crackers she did manage to go to sleep.
But, oh! she did miss her mamma, and Aunt Piffy, the old bear lady, who
was so fat. And more than once Neddie wished he might wake up and see
Uncle Wigwag, even if the old bear gentleman did play a trick on him.
And as for Mr. Whitewash, the Polar bear, Neddie would have given a
whole penny to see him again for even a second.
Still, he had run away of his own free will, Neddie had, and he must
make the best of it.
“Besides, I like it!” he said to himself. “I’m going to learn to be a
trained bear, and, when Beckie and I get a lot of money we’ll go back
home and make mamma and papa rich.”
Neddie thought it would be very easy to do this. In fact, he was a very
kind little bear and had not meant to do wrong when he asked Beckie to
run away with him.
But now let us see what happened.
Morning came at last. The sun rose from behind the hills, where it had
slept all night, and made a bright light through the trees, from which
all the leaves now had fallen.
“Well, children, did you sleep well?” asked George, the trained bear, as
he wet his big paws in a spring of water and washed his face.
“Pretty well, thank you,” answered Neddie, politely.
“Do you think we will get some buns and popcorn to-day, George?” asked
Beckie, anxiously.
“We might,” said the trained bear. “I’m sorry I made you think we
trained bears had that sort of food every day. But if we don’t get it
to-day I’m sure we will on Thursday, which will be Thanksgiving. And,
anyhow, to-day we’ll travel on, and you’ll see me do my tricks, and
you’ll hear the Professor blow his bugle and sing, and you’ll see the
people standing around to look at me and wonder. And, who knows? perhaps
you may do some tricks yourselves.”
“We can climb a telegraph pole, anyhow,” said Beckie, a bit proudly.
“Even if it did take an alligator to scare us into doing it.”
“Well, we’ll have breakfast and travel on,” said the Professor, after a
bit. Then he reached in the bag again and pulled out some more dried
bread.
“Only that!” whispered Neddie, and he thought of what a nice meal the
folks at home were having—huckleberry pancakes, maybe, with maple sugar
on, and hot buns and milk sweetened with honey.
“Oh, dear!” sighed Beckie, but she was a brave little bear girl and made
up her mind not to find fault, especially after having run away when she
didn’t really have to. So Beckie washed the face of her rubber doll,
Mary Ann Puddingstick Clothespin, and made believe give her some
breakfast.
Then Beckie and Neddie ate their dried bread, and so did George, the
trained bear, and the Professor ate some too. Then the Professor played
a lively tune on his bugle:
“Ta-ra! Ta-ra-ta! Ta-ra-ta! Ta-ra-ta! Ta! Ta!” he blew.
It was quite nice and jolly and made all the bears feel better.
“Here we go!” cried the Professor. “Forward—march! Here we go!”
He tossed the long pole to George, who shouldered it just like a gun,
and marched on with his head high in the air, while Beckie and Neddie
laughed at him, he was so funny.
“Oh, I guess we’ll like this after all,” said Neddie.
“Maybe,” spoke Beckie, as she hugged her rubber doll.
But every one was very sad back in the cave-house where the Stubtail
children lived. As soon as morning had come Aunt Piffy, going in to call
Neddie and Beckie, saw that they were not in their beds.
“They’re gone!” cried the nice, fat old lady bear.
“They’re up to some trick,” said Uncle Wigwag, who, always playing
tricks himself, thought that other bears would do the same thing.
“We must find them,” said Mr. Whitewash, the polar bear.
But although they looked all over they could not find Neddie and Beckie,
of course, for the children were with the Professor and the trained
bear, far, far away. You knew that, didn’t you?
Oh! how badly papa and mamma Stubtail felt, and they called a nice dog
policeman to help find Neddie and Beckie. But I’ll tell you about that
part later. This story is about Neddie’s trick.
After breakfast, as I said, the Professor, George, the trained bear, and
Neddie and Beckie went on and on through the woods.
“Soon we will come to a village,” said the Professor. “There George will
do some of his tricks, and you little bears can climb a telegraph pole,
or maybe the church steeple. Then the people will laugh and clap their
hands and give us things to eat.”
“Buns and popcorn balls?” asked Beckie, anxiously.
“Yes, I think so,” said the Professor.
Soon they did come to a village, and the Professor blew some sweet notes
on his bugle. At once a lot of children came running out to watch the
bears, and when they saw Neddie and Beckie the children said:
“Oh, aren’t they cute!”
One little girl even touched Beckie’s fur, and Beckie liked to feel the
tiny hand. Beckie and Neddie were getting so they were not afraid of
real folks. Then George, the trained bear, did some of his tricks,
turning somersaults, playing soldier and the like.
“Now you little bears will do a trick,” said the Professor. “Come,
Neddie, climb a pole!” And he blew on the bugle.
Neddie looked for a pole to climb, but just then he saw a fat woman,
almost as fat as Aunt Piffy, coming down the street. The fat woman had a
basket of eggs on her arm, and the eggs were very heavy.
“Oh, I must help her!” said Neddie, politely, for his mamma had always
taught him to be polite to ladies, whether they were fat or not.
So Neddie waltzed over to take the basket of eggs so that he might help
the woman. She saw the bear coming and, not knowing Neddie was kind and
tame and trained, she screamed and ran. Neddie ran after her, and just
as he put his paw on the handle of the basket of eggs he slipped on a
banana peeling, and so did the fat lady. Down they both went, ker-thump,
and the basket of eggs fell also—and——
Well, you can imagine what happened! Neddie and the fat woman were just
covered with the whites and yellows of eggs—all stuck up like—and
everybody laughed like anything. Really they could not help it.
“Oh, what a fine trick!” cried the boys and girls, clapping their hands.
“Yes, but it is too expensive a trick to do every day,” said the
Professor. “I shall have to pay for those eggs, I guess.” And the fat
woman made him pay almost a dollar, and nobody gave Neddie or Beckie any
buns, or popcorn balls, either.
“Well, we’ll travel on,” said the Professor. “We may get some ice cream
in the next place.” So on they went after Neddie had washed off the
sticky eggs from his fur in a brook of water.
And next, if the rubber plant doesn’t stretch itself out and take all
the lumps of sugar from the salt cellar, I’ll tell you about the
Stubtails’ Thanksgiving.
[Illustration]
STORY IX
THE STUBTAILS’ THANKSGIVING
“Mamma! Mamma!” called little Beckie Stubtail, the bear girl, as she
awoke in the morning. “Oh, mamma, is breakfast ready?”
“Hush!” exclaimed Neddie, the little boy bear, as he reached over with
his paw and patted his sister Beckie. “Mamma isn’t here, Beckie.”
“Oh, that’s so; she isn’t,” and Beckie sat up in her bed of leaves under
a tree out in the open air. Neddie was sleeping next to her, and on the
other side was George, the tame trained bear, and Professor, the man who
made George do tricks, and who blew tunes on a brass horn.
“Oh, dear!” cried Beckie. “I thought, for a minute, just for a minute,
Neddie, you know, that we were back home again with mamma, and papa and
Aunt Piffy and Uncle Wigwag and Mr. Whitewash, the polar bear, and all
our friends. But we’re not; are we?”
“No,” answered Neddie, stretching out in the dried leaves, so that they
rustled like corn husks. “We’re not home, Beckie. We ran away, you know,
to become trained bears, and earn money the way Jackie and Peetie Bow
Wow, the puppy dog boys, did when they joined the circus.”
“Only they didn’t,” said Beckie, looking to see if her rubber doll,
Maryann Puddingstick Clothespin, was still asleep.
“They didn’t what?” asked Neddie.
“They didn’t earn any money. And maybe we won’t.”
“Oh, yes, we will,” said Neddie. “You see we know how to do the trick of
climbing the telegraph pole, and I can take a basket of eggs, and fall
down, and break almost every one.”
“Yes,” laughed Beckie, “but that’s a trick the Professor doesn’t want
you to do. Eggs cost too much!” and she laughed again, as she thought of
the fat lady whose basket of eggs Neddie had tried to carry, when he
slipped on a banana skin and went down ker-thump! as I told you in
another story.
“Well, anyhow, we’ll learn some real tricks, and soon we’ll get money,”
spoke Neddie. He and his sister, you know, had run away from their house
in the nice cave to join George, the tame bear, with a ring in his nose,
and the Professor who made George do tricks.
“I wonder what we’ll have for breakfast to-day?” asked Beckie, as she
saw George, the big bear, stretching himself.
“I hope it’s something good,” spoke Neddie, as he saw the Professor
getting up. “I’m tired of dried bread; and that’s all we’ve had so far.”
“Yes; we haven’t had any of the nice buns and the popcorn balls that
George told us about that day he met us in the woods,” went on Beckie.
“Come to breakfast, Beckie and Neddie,” called the Professor, for he
could speak and understand bear language. And he took some dried bread
out of his bag.
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Beckie.
“Dear, oh!” cried Neddie.
“Never mind,” said the Professor, “to-morrow will be Thanksgiving and
I’m sure something will happen between now and then so that we shall all
have a fine dinner. We will start off soon, and see if we can find our
fortunes as Uncle Wiggily, the rabbit gentleman, did his. Come on!”
So the little bear children, and George, the trained bear, and the
Professor ate their breakfast of dried bread, and drank some water from
a spring. And then they traveled on again.
Sometimes they would come to a little village, or town, and there the
Professor would blow his brass horn. All the boys and girls, and some of
the older people, would gather about in a circle. Then George, the big
bear, would do his tricks, marching like a soldier, turning somersaults,
waltzing, climbing a tree or making believe wrestle with the Professor.
“And the little bears can do tricks, too,” said the Professor to the
people. “Come, Beckie—Neddie, climb a pole for the audience!”
Then the little Stubtail bears would stick their claws into a smooth
telegraph pole, and up they would go to the very tip-top.
Then you should have heard the children laugh and shout, and clap their
hands. The big people would put pennies in the hat of the Professor, and
some of the children would run in their houses and get slices of bread,
or maybe an apple or something else good to eat to give to the bears.
For George, the big fellow, as well as Beckie and Neddie were kind,
gentle and tame bears, you know. They would hurt no one.
But when it came night they had gotten nothing like a Thanksgiving
dinner, nor did they have any invitation to eat one with friends,
either.
“I—I wish we were home,” said Beckie, and some tears came into her eyes.
The tears didn’t quite fall out, but almost.
“Well, wait until to-morrow,” suggested Neddie. “Something may happen
then, and it isn’t Thanksgiving until to-morrow, you know.”
Well, the next day came. It was Thanksgiving, and still there was no
sign of a fine, big dinner for the bears or the Professor. They had
slept that night in the woods, the Professor cuddling up close to big
George to keep warm in the bear’s thick fur. And though they had some
cookies and cakes and apples to eat, it was far from being what Beckie
or Neddie would have had, had they not run away from their cave-house.
“We’ll travel on,” said the Professor, “and see what happens.”
Well, they had not gone very far, before all of a sudden they saw a man
running through the woods. And right after him came a big lion, roaring
as loudly as he could roar. And the lion was switching his tail from
side to side, and every now and then, reaching out his claws to grab the
man.
“Oh, save me! Save me!” cried the man.
“Bur-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!” roared the lion.
“Oh, can’t you help the poor man?” asked Beckie, of George, the big
bear.
“I’ll try,” said George. Then he ran after the lion, and with the long
pole which the Professor let George carry as a soldier-gun, George
tripped up the roaring lion beast. Just then the Professor blew a loud
blast on his brass horn, and Beckie and Neddie threw a lot of oak tree
acorns at the lion. All this frightened the lion very much, especially
when he felt the acorns hitting him. He thought they were bullets, and
he thought the noise of the brass horn meant that a lot of soldiers were
coming after him.
So away ran the lion through the woods, and the man was safe. Oh, how
thankful he was!
“You saved my life,” he said to the Professor, and to Neddie and Beckie
and George. “What can I do for you? where are you going?”
“We are looking for a Thanksgiving dinner,” said the Professor, “but we
have not found it yet.”
“Ha! Say no more!” cried the man, quickly. “Come with me! I will give
you the best Thanksgiving dinner you ever ate!”
“Who are you?” asked Beckie.
“I am a circus man,” answered the one the lion had chased. “But we do
not give shows in winter. I have all my animals in a big barn, not far
away. This morning that lion would not bring in a pail of milk when I
asked him to, and to punish him I said he could have no dinner. So he
chased me, and I don’t know what he would have done had he caught me.
But you saved me, the lion has run away, and I suppose a policeman
monkey will catch him. But you—come to my animal barn and you may have
the dinner I was going to give the lion, as well as all you can eat
besides. Come on!”
“Oh, at last we are to have a Thanksgiving dinner!” cried Neddie. “Oh,
joy!” And Beckie clapped her paws.
Then the Professor and Beckie and Neddie and George, the big bear,
followed the circus man. He led them to a big barn in the woods. And,
oh! all the animals that were there—elephants and tigers and good lions,
and zebras and more bears and lots of monkeys, and giraffes with necks
so long that they could pick an orange off a church steeple, and cunning
little ponies, and a hippopotamus with a mouth like a red flannel
bag—and hundreds of others.