baby, and honestly it did look like one. Of course the alligator didn’t
know any better, you see.
“Yes, now I’ve got you two animal girls, and also the baby,” went on the
bad creature. “Oh, ho! This is a lucky day for me!” and he blinked his
fishy eyes real sassy-like.
“What—what are you going to do with us?” Beckie asked, trying to be
brave and not afraid.
“What am I going to do with you?” repeated the alligator. “Why, I am
going to carry you off to my cave and there I’ll keep you for a year and
a day. And after that—ha, hum—let me see. Why, I guess I’ll keep you
there forever.”
“Oh, dear! That will be terrible,” cried Susie, as she thought she might
never see her little brother Sammie any more, nor Uncle Wiggily, either.
“Please let us go!” cried the little rabbit girl.
“No, I will not!” growled the bad old skillery-scalery alligator.
Then Susie and Beckie tried as hard as they could to get away, but the
alligator only wound his double-jointed, stretchy, rubbery tail the more
tightly about them. Then he began to drag them off to his dark cave, to
keep them forever and a day, and then—and then——
All of a sudden something happened. Beckie felt her new wax doll
wiggling in her arms, and the doll seemed to be trying to get away.
Beckie held the doll tightly, but the wax creature only wiggled the
more.
Then all at once that doll grew up into a great big giant lady, as tall
as a tree in the woods, taller and bigger and stronger than the old
alligator, and then that wax doll just took her two strong arms, and
with them she unwound the alligator’s tail from about Beckie and Susie.
And then the doll lady cried:
“There you go, you bad creature, and don’t let me ever catch you
bothering Susie or Beckie again!” And with that the doll lady just
tossed the alligator into one peppersault after another over the tree
tops, and away he sailed, turning over and over through the air, and if
he hasn’t stopped he may be sailing yet for all I know unless he has
reached the moon.
Beckie and Susie were so surprised that they did not know what to do,
but while they looked the doll lady shrank down to her regular wax size
again, and she blinked her eyes and said “Mamma” and “Papa” just like
any phonograph doll can do.
“Well, what do you know about that?” cried Beckie. “What a wonderful
doll I have, to be sure!”
But that was the only time Beckie’s wax doll turned herself into a giant
lady, and she wouldn’t have done it that time only to save Beckie and
Susie from the alligator.
The two little animal girls were very glad indeed to get away from the
skillery-scalery alligator, and they hurried home as fast as they could,
and played house with the wax doll, and had a lot of fun.
And in the next story, if the baby carriage doesn’t fall down stairs and
bump the rubber tires off the wheels, for the puppy dog to chew for gum,
I’ll tell you about Neddie and the lemon pie.
STORY XXVIII
NEDDIE AND THE LEMON PIE
“Ho, Neddie boy!” called Uncle Wigwag, the gentleman bear, to the little
boy bear who was coming home from school, swinging his books in a strap
that dangled from his paw. “Ho, Neddie boy, your mamma wants you!”
“She does?” asked Neddie. “What for?”
“To go to the store for a bushel of lemons!” said Uncle Wigwag, waltzing
around on one paw, and holding the other up in the air like a
jumping-jack dancing on top of a frosted cake.
“Oh, now I know you’re joking,” said Neddie, for Uncle Wigwag was a
funny old bear gentleman, always playing tricks.
“Well, I am joking, just the least little bit,” admitted Uncle Wigwag,
blinking both his eyes slow and careful like, so as not to get any dust
in them. “But really your mamma does want you to go to the store. She
told me to tell you just as soon as you came home from school.”
“What does she want?” asked Neddie. “I was going over to Jackie Bow
Wow’s house to play football with him.”
“Your mamma wants you to go to the bakery for a lemon pie,” said Uncle
Wigwag, scratching his left ear with his right paw, which is not an easy
thing to do. “I just said a bushel of lemons for fun, you know. But
really I think I’d like a pie with a bushel of lemons in.”
“So would I!” exclaimed Neddie. “I love lemon pie. I hope mamma wants me
to get a big one, with that funny white of egg stuff and sugar on top.”
“That’s the very kind I want,” said Mrs. Stubtail, the lady bear, coming
to the door just then. “Get me a large lemon meringue pie, Neddie. You
see we are going to have company to-night, and really I haven’t time to
bake a pie, and Aunt Piffy is so busy with dusting and sweeping that she
hasn’t either. And as for asking Uncle Wigwag to make a pie, why I’m
afraid he’d play some joke with it—such as putting in sawdust, or
filling the top with white cotton batting.”
“Yes, I guess maybe I would,” said Uncle Wigwag, smiling at himself,
which is another hard thing to do. “I will have my joke. But as long as
I have told Neddie what you want of him, I suppose I may go over and see
Grandfather Goosey Gander now, may I not?” asked the old bear gentleman,
turning a peppersault as easily as a cow can blow her horn.
“Yes, I won’t need you around here, as long as I have Neddie to run on
my errands,” said Mrs. Stubtail. “But don’t play too many tricks,
Waggy,” she said, calling Uncle Wigwag a pet name he sometimes went by.
“And be sure to be back here for supper,” went on the lady bear.
“Oh, you may be sure I’ll not miss that!” exclaimed Uncle Wigwag with a
laugh. “I want some of that lemon pie Neddie is going to bring home from
the baker’s.”
So off went Uncle Wigwag to call on Grandfather Goosey Gander.
“Where is your sister Beckie?” asked Mrs. Stubtail, of Neddie, as she
gave him the money to get the pie.
“Oh, she went over to Susie Littletail’s house, to talk about wax dolls,
I guess,” spoke Neddie. “She told me to tell you she’ll be home to
supper. I know I’ll be here to supper, anyhow,” went on Neddie, smacking
his lips as he thought of the lemon pie. “Who are the company, mamma?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Silver-tip, a new family of bears who have moved into the
cave across the street,” answered Mrs. Stubtail: “I want to make them
feel at home.”
“Do they like lemon pie?” asked Neddie.
“Oh, I guess so,” said Mrs. Stubtail.
“Oh, dear!” sighed the little bear cub.
“Why, what’s the matter?” asked his mother.
“So many people like lemon pie,” he replied. “I’m afraid there won’t be
enough to go around. There’s Uncle Wigwag, and—”
“Oh, don’t worry!” laughed Mrs. Stubtail. “You may get the largest lemon
pie the baker has.”
Then Neddie felt happy, and off he went to the baker’s as fast as his
paws would take him. Sometimes he ran along on just his hind feet,
walking almost like a real boy and like the trained bears you see in the
circus. And again Neddie would drop down on his four feet and go along
that way for a while, like a little poodle doggie.
It was quite cold and there was some snow on the ground. Not as much as
the time Neddie jumped into the big drift, but enough to make some
snowballs. Neddie made a few in his paws, tossing them up into the
air—the snowballs I mean he tossed, not his paws—and he caught the
snowballs as they came down.
Pretty soon Neddie came to the baker’s, and he said:
“I want the largest lemon pie you have, if you please.”
“All right,” said Mr. Peetie Skeezex, the baker, “you shall have it. I
have a specially fine large one.”
Then he brought out from the oven the loveliest lemon meringue pie
Neddie had ever seen. It was almost as large around as a Christmas drum,
and on top was a lot of that white fluffy stuff made from eggs, and it
was browned just the least little bit, and sprinkled with powdered
sugar, and around the edge was some sort of curly-cue stuff like twisted
rope, and the pie was as pretty as one picture and part of another one.
“Oh, yum-yum!” cried Neddie when he saw the lemon pie. He could not help
it, and he could hardly stop from taking a taste. But the baker knew
what hungry bear boys might do to a lemon pie, so Mr. Peetie Skeezex put
the lemon pie in a paper and tied it very tight.
“There you are, Neddie,” he said to the little bear boy. “There’s your
pie. Hurry home with it.”
“I will,” answered Neddie. “We’re going to have it for supper. We’ve got
company coming.”
“Fine!” said Mr. Skeezex, giving Neddie a sweet cake to keep him from
getting too hungry on the way home with the pie. I guess the baker was
afraid that maybe Neddie might bite the pie, just to see if it were
real. But if Neddie had a sweet cake of his own to nibble on, this might
not happen.
Neddie started for home, carrying the big lemon pie as carefully as the
milkman brings in a bottle of cream for the cat, and the little boy bear
was about half way to the cave-house, when, all of a sudden, while he
was thinking how he could get two pieces of pie for supper, all at once
out from behind a mulberry bush jumped an old sea lion.
“Bur-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!” roared the sea lion, shaking his whiskers
from side to side. “Bur-r-r-r-r!”
“Oh, dear!” cried Neddie, standing still with the lemon pie, he was so
frightened. “Oh, dear!”
“Bur-r-r-r-r-r! Wow! Woff! Snuff! Bur-r-r-r!” growled the sea lion.
“Don’t be afraid, little bear boy.”
Well, now, I leave it to you, wouldn’t anybody be afraid to be stopped
on their way home with a lemon pie for supper—stopped by a sea lion who
growled like that? I guess they would. Neddie Stubtail was, anyhow. And
by rights, that sea lion ought to have been in the ocean where he
belonged. But the ocean was so cold, on account of the ice being in it,
that the sea lion had flopped out. And now he was going to catch Neddie.
Oh, dear!
“Don’t be afraid,” said the sea lion to Neddie. “I am not going to hurt
you. What have you there?”
“A lemon pie, if you please,” answered Neddie, his teeth chattering.
“Bur-r-r-r-r!” growled the sea lion. “Give it to me. I am very fond of
lemon pie. I like it better than lollypops.”
“But, if you please,” said Neddie, “this pie is for supper. We have
company coming.”
“That matters not to me,” said the sea lion. “Give me that pie!”
And then brave Neddie, thinking he must save the pie, whatever else
happened, gave a big jump. Right over the sea lion’s head he went, and
then how Neddie ran for home!
“Ha! You can’t get away like that!” cried the sea lion, and after Neddie
he flopped. Well, Neddie ran as fast as he could, and the sea lion
flopped as fast as he could, and the bad creature had almost caught the
little bear boy when, all at once part of the lemon pie slipped off the
bottom crust.
Right through a hole in the bag it went, and into the path it fell, and
before the sea lion could stop himself he had slipped on the slippery
lemon stuff of the pie and head over flippers he went, slipping and
sliding, until he came to the top of a hill, and he fell over that and
down into a bramble briar bush, and he didn’t get out for a week and a
day.
So Neddie was saved, and he got safely home with the rest of the pie,
and only a little bit had fallen off, so there was enough left for him
and for Beckie and the company, and even for Uncle Wigwag.
So that’s the story of Neddie and the lemon pie and if the iceman
doesn’t take our refrigerator home with him to keep his little pussy cat
warm in, I’ll tell you next about Beckie and the cold birdie.
STORY XXIX
BECKIE AND THE COLD BIRDIE
“Oh, see it snow!” exclaimed Neddie Stubtail, the little boy bear, as he
looked out of the window of the cave-house. “Look, Beckie!”
“I can’t, Neddie, dear,” said the little girl bear. “I am making a new
dress for my wax doll, Clarabelle Sarahjane Peartree, and if I look up I
may drop a stitch or two.”
“Oh, if you drop them I’ll pick them up,” said Neddie most politely.
Beckie laughed.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “When you are sewing and drop a stitch
it means you let it slip out of the cloth. It doesn’t drop on the
floor.”
“I don’t understand,” said Neddie; “I admit that. But anyhow it’s
snowing, and I’m going out and have some fun.”
“I will come, too, as soon as I get this doll’s dress done,” answered
Beckie. “But I have to put some frills down the middle and some plaits
up the side. Then around one edge there is to go some lace, and on the
other some insertion and——”
“That’s enough,” cried Neddie. “I give up! I’m going out and make a
snowball, and there won’t be any lace on it, nor any tucks, either.”
“Oh, you boys!” said Beckie with a sigh, as she threaded her needle with
a fine piece of corn silk that she was using to sew her doll’s dress.
So Neddie went out to play in the snow, and while he was hopping about,
making snowballs and throwing them up in the air to watch them come
down, and now and then rolling over and over in the snow to make himself
look white like Mr. Whitewash, the polar bear—while Neddie was doing
this, his sister Beckie was sewing her doll’s dress.
Pretty soon she had it nearly finished, so she laid it aside, and put
her needle safely away where Uncle Wigwag or Aunt Piffy, the fat old
lady bear, would not sit on it by mistake, and then Beckie went out to
play with her brother Neddie.
The two bear children had lots of fun in the snow, and in a little while
Neddie said:
“Let’s go over in the woods, Beckie. Maybe we’ll find a lemon pie or a
pollylop, or something like that.”
“What’s a pollylop?” asked Beckie, as she caught a snowflake on the end
of her tongue, just as the clown in the circus catches a little piggie
by his tail. “I never heard of a pollylop, Neddie.”
“Why,” said the little bear boy, “a pollylop is just like a lollypop
only different. You see a lollypop is a stick with a lump of candy on
one end.”
“Oh, yes, I know that,” answered Beckie.
“And a pollylop,” went on Neddie, “is a lump of candy, with a stick on
one end.”
“Oh, I see what you mean!” exclaimed Beckie with a laugh. “One is upside
down and the other——”
“The other is downside up,” finished her brother, as he turned a
peppersault into a bank of snow, and came out on the other side with a
feather sticking in his ear.
“Oh, look at that!” exclaimed Beckie. “Where did you get that feather,
Neddie?”
“Why, I don’t know,” he answered, scratching his left paw with his right
ear. “I guess it must have come out of the snowbank.”
“Feathers don’t grow in snowbanks, Neddie,” spoke Beckie.
“No more they do,” he answered, taking this one from his ear and looking
at it. “I guess this feather must be off a chicken or a turkey, Beckie.”
“No, it isn’t large enough for a chicken’s or a turkey’s feather,” said
Beckie. “It must be from a little bird. But what would a bird be doing
in a snowbank?”
And just then the two little bear children heard a voice crying:
“Oh, dear! How cold I am! Oh, I am almost frozen!”
“Oh, the poor thing!” exclaimed Beckie. “That’s a poor little birdie in
the snowbank, Neddie. You must get him out and we’ll warm him.”
“How?” asked the little bear boy. “How can you warm him?”
“Oh, I’ll find a way,” said Beckie.
“All right. Then I’ll dive into the snowbank again,” said Neddie. And
into the snow he went, scattering it carefully about with his paws
until, down near the bottom, on the ground, covered with the white
flakes, and almost frozen, was a poor little birdie.
“Oh, the dear little thing!” cried Beckie, as Neddie brought out the
birdie in his paws, holding it carefully so as not to squeeze it.
“Cheep! Cheep!” went the cold little birdie. That was all it could say.
“Quick, Neddie!” exclaimed Beckie. “You run home and get me some nice
warm milk in a bottle. Aunt Piffy will heat it for you. Bring it back
here to me, and some bread crumbs, too, I’ll feed the little birdie.”
“But why don’t you bring it home with you?” Neddie wanted to know.
“Because I don’t want to carry it through the cold air,” answered
Beckie. “I’m going to warm the birdie in my fur while you are gone after
the milk.”
So Neddie ran back home to the cave-house, and Beckie sat down on a
stump that stuck up above the snow, and in her warm fur Beckie cuddled
the cold birdie, holding her paws over it to keep off the frosty north
wind.
“Cheep! cheep!” went the small birdie, and soon it was nice and warm and
could flutter its wings a little.
“Do you feel better now?” asked Beckie.
“Oh, much better,” answered the fluttering creature. “Thank you so much
for warming me.”
“But how did you happen to get in the snowbank?” asked Beckie.
“It was this way,” explained the bird. “Yesterday all my friends and
brothers and sisters flew away down South, where it is warm. But I
stayed to have a game of tag with Lulu Wibblewobble, the duck girl, and
I was left behind. Then it got colder and colder, and I could not fly. I
fell into the snow and there I stayed until you came to get me out. I
can never thank you enough.”
“Pray do not think of that,” said Beckie most politely. “I am glad we
could save you. I suppose it was your feather that stuck in Neddie’s ear
when he took a peppersault dive through the snow.”
“Yes,” said the birdie, “it was a loose one from my tail. And it is a
good thing it came off, otherwise you would never have known I was
here.”
“Very true,” answered Beckie. Then she warmed the poor, cold little
birdie some more in her fur, and wondered when Neddie would be back with
the hot milk and the bread crumbs.
All of a sudden, as Beckie was sitting there on the stump, warming the
birdie, out from behind an old apple tree came the biggest fox Beckie
had ever seen. He was much larger than the little bear girl. In fact, he
must have been the grandfather of all the foxes.
“Wuff! Wuff! Wuff!” barked the fox. “I can see where my Christmas dinner
is coming from.”
“From where?” asked Beckie, as bravely as she could, though really she
was much frightened.
“From you and that bird,” answered the bad fox. “I am going to carry you
both off to my den, and what a Christmas dinner I will have!”
Well, he was just going to jump and grab Beckie, when the little birdie
that wasn’t cold any more, but nice and warm, thanks to Beckie’s
fur—that little bird just flew right into the face of that fox, and with
its sharp beak the bird picked the fox on the end of his nose as hard as
anything.
“Oh, wow!” cried the fox. “I guess I have made a mistake! I don’t want a
Christmas dinner off you at all.”
“I guess you don’t!” chirped the birdie, pecking him on the nose again,
and the fox ran away, taking his bushy tail with him, and Beckie and the
birdie were safe. Then Beckie warmed the birdie some more in her fur,
and pretty soon along came Neddie with the hot milk and bread crumbs,
and the birdie ate as much as it wanted.
Then Beckie and Neddie took the birdie home with them to keep it in the
warm cave until summer should come again; and everybody was happy except
the fox with the sore nose, and it served him right. And in the next
story, if the dinner plate doesn’t get hungry and bite a piece out of
the salt dish, I’ll tell you about Neddie helping Santa Claus.
[Illustration]
STORY XXX
NEDDIE HELPS SANTA CLAUS
“Only three days more until Christmas! Aren’t you glad, Neddie?” asked
Beckie Stubtail, the little girl bear, one morning as she jumped out of
her bed in the clean straw of the cave-house where she lived, and ran to
the door of her brother’s room. “Aren’t you just glad, Neddie?”
“Glad? Well, I guess I am!” answered Neddie, as he tickled himself with
a clothespin to make himself laugh. “I don’t even want to go to school
to-day, I’m so happy.”
“Oh, but I s’pose we do have to go,” spoke Beckie. “But maybe we’ll get
out early.”
Just then from the kitchen came a call:
“Hurry, Neddie—Beckie—breakfast is ready! Come and get your griddle
cakes with honey on!”
Then Beckie and Neddie, the little bear children, hurried downstairs.
Soon they were eating their breakfast. Their papa, Mr. Stubtail, the old
bear gentleman, had had his breakfast some time ago and gone to work.
Uncle Wigwag, the gentleman bear, who was always playing tricks and
cracking jokes, as a squirrel cracks nuts, was sitting in a corner,
trying to think of something new to do to make Aunt Piffy, the fat lady
bear, laugh.
Mr. Whitewash, the Polar bear gentleman, was out in the yard, looking
for a fresh cake of ice to sit on while he read the morning paper.
Pretty soon Neddie and Beckie started for their classes. They had on
their fur coats, for it was rather cold, you see. And in a little while,
when the bear children were almost at school, and had met Tommie and
Joie and Kat, the kitten children, in their red mittens and rubber
boots, it began to snow.
“Oh, how nice!” cried Beckie, jumping about.
“It’s just fine!” exclaimed Neddie. “I always like it to snow around
Christmas, for I’m going to get a new sled.”
“And I’m going to have a pair of skates,” said Tommie Kat. “At least I
asked Santa Claus for them, and I hope he brings them, and also some
ice, so I can use them.”
“Mr. Whitewash will lend you his cake of ice to skate on, if the pond
doesn’t freeze,” said Neddie.
And then the school bell rang, and the animal children had to hurry on,
so they would not be late.
Such fun as they had in school that day! It was so near Christmas that
the professor-teacher was not very strict, and when the children missed
their lessons he gave them another chance.
And the Professor let Beckie draw a picture of Santa Claus on the
blackboard, with a red cap, and fur on the coat and a big pack on his
back—I mean Santa Claus had all these things on, though of course the
blackboard had also, after Beckie got through drawing.
Well, when school was out, Neddie and Beckie ran home with the rest of
the animal children, but, all of a sudden, as the little bear boy came
to the old hollow stump, where Bully, the frog, used to give jumping
lessons in summer, Neddie happened to think that he had left his reading
book in school.
“I’ll run back and get it,” he said. “You go on, Beckie, and I’ll soon
catch up to you.”
But Neddie Stubtail didn’t come back as soon as he thought he would, for
when he got to the school he found that a little mouse boy had taken the
reading book down a rat hole to look at the pictures. And by the time
Neddie got his book back it was quite late, and growing dark.
“But I’m not afraid,” said Neddie as he hurried on toward home, with the
book under his paw. On and on he went, through the wood. It became
darker and darker. Neddie began to whistle, so he could not hear any
rustling in the bushes. For when the bushes rustled he imagined it might
be the skillery-scalery alligator, or maybe a bad wolf after him.
But nothing like that took place, and soon Neddie was almost home. Then
all of a sudden something did happen. Just as he was passing under a big
oak tree, with the brown leaves on it shaking in the wind, the little
bear boy heard a buzzing sound, and then a crash and a bang, and a
rattle, and some one cried:
“Oh, dear! Now I have gone and done it! Oh, my, yes! and some
reindeer-lollypops besides! Oh, what am I going to do now? And not half
my work done!”
Neddie crouched down under the bushes. He knew well enough that
something had happened up in the oak tree. What it was he could not
tell.
“But if it’s a giant, or a bad elephant or a flying eagle trying to get
me, they shan’t!” exclaimed Neddie.
Then he heard the voice crying again:
“Help! Help! Is there anybody around to help me? I’m stuck in the tree!”
“Ha!” exclaimed Neddie to himself. “He’s only saying that to fool me. I
believe that’s the skillery-scalery alligator sailing around in a
balloon, looking for me. But he shan’t find me. I’ll hide here until he
goes away.”
So Neddie got farther under the bush, and then the voice cried again:
“Help! Help! Please help me!”
Then some bells jingled, and Neddie heard a song that went something
like this:
“Won’t you please come to help me.
I am caught fast in a tree.
Christmas time will soon be here,
But I’ll sure be late this year,
Unless some one comes quickly,
And gets me loose from out this tree.”
Hearing that nice song Neddie wasn’t afraid any more. He opened his ears
as wide as he could and listened. He opened his eyes as wide as he could
and looked up. Then he saw a strange sight.
Caught fast in the tree was an airship—you know what they are—a sort of
flying balloon, like a toy circus one, only larger. And in the airship
was a nice old gentleman, with a red coat and long white whiskers; and
beside him in the airship was a big bag just filled to the top with
sleds and dolls and rocking horses and cradles, and steam engines and
toy motor boats, and skates and jumping-jacks, and, oh! I couldn’t begin
to tell you what was in it. Neddie knew right away who was in trouble.
“You’re Santa Claus, aren’t you?” he asked, as he came out from under
the bush.