Part 10

Well, he was sitting there, reading his paper, and sort of not looking what he was doing. He reached out his paw to take his cup of tea, with his eyes still on the paper, and when he picked up the cup and started to drink from it, there was no tea in it. Instead, Uncle Wigwag had put in some ink, and when Mr. Whitewash, not looking at it, started to drink it, the ink spilled all over his white fur. It made him look like a spotted clown in the circus.

“Ha, ha!” laughed Uncle Wigwag. “That’s a fine joke!”

“I don’t think so,” said Mr. Whitewash. “And you had better look out, or I’ll play a joke on you.”

Then Uncle Wigwag felt sorry he had done such a thing, and he helped Mr. Whitewash clean the ink off his white fur. Neddie and Beckie helped also. And a little later the Polar bear gentleman said to the two children:

“You just watch and see what a trick I shall play on Uncle Wigwag.”

So Neddie and Beckie watched, though they didn’t see anything for some time. But toward dark that evening, when Neddie was bringing in his wood to fill the box behind the kitchen stove, he heard some one crying in the fields across the way from the bear cave.

“Help! Help! Oh, help!” called a voice.

“Why, who can that be?” asked Beckie, who was watching Neddie bring in the wood.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered the little bear boy, “but I’m going to see.”

“Oh, you’d better not,” spoke Beckie. “Maybe it’s the bad old lion.”

“Yes, and maybe it’s Uncle Wiggily, the nice rabbit gentleman. He may be in trouble,” went on Neddie. “Come on, it isn’t far. We’ll go see. We must help Uncle Wiggily, you know.”

There was no one else in the bear cave just then to go to the help of whoever was calling, as Mrs. Stubtail and Aunt Piffy had gone over to the house of Mrs. Kat, the kitten children’s mamma, to ask about making sugar pie. So Neddie and Beckie had to do whatever they were going to do all by themselves.

They hurried on toward where they heard the voice. It was still calling:

“Help! Help! Oh, will no one help me?”

“Yes, we are coming!” answered Neddie, and then he and Beckie ran around the corner by a stump, and they saw, sitting there, Uncle Wigwag, the old joking bear gentleman himself. He did not seem to be in any trouble, and the bear children wondered what had happened to him.

“Help! Help!” he called.

“Why, what is the matter?” asked Neddie. “If you are in trouble why don’t you come away? I see no one hurting you.”

“No, you can’t see it, but I’m in trouble just the same,” said the bear gentleman making a funny face. “I am frozen fast to a cake of ice!”

“Frozen to a cake of ice?” said Beckie in surprise.

“Yes. It’s a trick played on me by Mr. Whitewash, but I am not complaining about it. It serves me right for playing so many jokes to-day, especially the one on him with the ink.

“I was walking along, thinking of a new joke to try, when I saw what I thought was a nice seat here by this old stump. The seat had a blanket over the top, and a sign saying:

‘PLEASE SIT DOWN ON ME!’

“Well, of course, I sat down, and before I knew it I was frozen fast. You see there was a cake of ice under the blanket, and I’m sure Mr. Whitewash put it there, just to fool me.”

“I guess he did,” said Neddie, and he could hardly keep from laughing, for Uncle Wigwag looked so funny, frozen fast.

“Can’t you help me?” asked the bear gentleman. “You see Mr. Whitewash can sit on a cake of ice without freezing to it, for he is used to living at the North Pole, but I am not. Oh, dear! I’m freezing tighter and tighter. I may have to stay here all night.”

“Oh, no, we will help you,” said Neddie kindly. So he and Beckie blew their warm breath on the cake of ice, and soon it was melted enough so that Uncle Wigwag could pull himself loose. And very glad, indeed, he was to get up. Then along came Mr. Whitewash saying, as he combed his claws through his white fur:

“Well, I see my trick worked after all.”

“Yes,” spoke Uncle Wigwag, “it did. And it served me right. Now let’s all go and have some hot chocolate, for I am chilled through.” So they had the hot chocolate in the drug store, and everybody was happy, and Uncle Wigwag didn’t play any more tricks until the next time.

And if the cat in our back yard doesn’t try to walk across the clothes line and fall off into the ash can, I’ll tell you next about Beckie Stubtail and her wax doll.

STORY XXVII BECKIE AND HER WAX DOLL

Beckie Stubtail, the little girl bear, who lived in the cave-house near the nice woods, had more dolls than any real girl I know of, except maybe the daughter of Santa Claus—that is if he has any children. But, of course, Santa Claus must have children of his own, or else how could he love so many children that belong to other persons—always giving them nice things at Christmas, and all that?

Oh, yes, I know, lots of folks say there isn’t any Santa Claus at all, but you and I know differently, don’t we? And if those persons don’t believe it, I can show them, right on the roof of my house, the very same chimney down which Santa Claus comes every Christmas.

That ought to make them believe, oughtn’t it now? Well, I guess yes, and some lollypops besides!

But what I started to say was that Beckie Stubtail, the little girl bear, had more dolls of different sorts than any real child. Of course a daughter of Santa Claus wouldn’t count, for she could go to her papa’s big present-bag and take out as many dolls as she wanted—or rocking horses or jumping-jacks or anything else. So I don’t mean her.

Really Beckie had the mostest dolls, if you will kindly let me use such a word, which I know isn’t just right. Beckie had a rubber doll that would bounce up and down when you dropped her in the bath tub or on the floor. That doll’s name was Sallie Ann Kissmequick.

And then there was a rag doll, with shoe buttons sewed in her face for eyes. And the funny part about that doll was that she always kept looking at her feet. I suppose it was on account of the shoe buttons.

“But best of all,” said Beckie, when she was talking about her toys to Susie Littletail, the rabbit girl, “best of all, I like my sawdust doll, Matilda Jane Shavingstick. She is just lovely!”

“What funny names your dolls have,” said Susie.

“Yes, some of the names were given them by my Uncle Wigwag. He’s always playing tricks, and jokes, you know.”

“I know!” exclaimed Susie with a laugh, as she remembered how Uncle Wigwag, the funny old bear gentleman, had played one joke too many a few days before and how he had frozen himself fast to a cake of ice that Mr. Whitewash, the Polar bear gentleman, used as an easy chair.

“And I like my clothespin doll, too,” went on Beckie, for she did have a doll made of a clothespin, with inky eyes.

“I like my wax doll best of all,” said Susie. “My Uncle Wiggily Longears gave her to me last Christmas. Oh, she’s such a darling! Her cheeks are so pink and her eyes are so blue, and she can open and shut them, too, and she can say ‘Mamma’ and ‘Papa,’ when you push on a spring in her back.”

“Oh, I wish I had a wax doll!” exclaimed Beckie, the little girl bear, sort of sad-like. “But I don’t s’pose I’ll ever get one, even if Christmas is coming.”

Now, you boys needn’t go away just because you think there’s nothing but dolls in this story. I’m going to put in a real scary part pretty soon. In fact, it’s coming around the corner of my typewriter now and I’ll be up to it in a minute.

Well, Susie, the rabbit girl, and Beckie, the little bear girl, talked a lot more about dolls. I could write down what they said, but I guess you girls know pretty much what it was, anyhow, and as for the boys—well, I’ll just say that the two little animal girls kept on saying such things as, “Oh, she’s just too sweet for anything!” “She’s a darling!” “And she blinks her eyes so natural!” All doll-talk, you know.

Well, Beckie and Susie walked on through the woods, and pretty soon they came to a place where there was an old hollow stump. In the summer time a nice family of birds lived in it. They were some relation to Dickie Chip-Chip, the sparrow boy, but now all the birds had flown away down South, where it was nice and warm. For it was winter in bear-land, you know.

All the while Beckie Stubtail was wishing and wishing she had a wax doll, with real hair, and then, all of sudden, she looked at the old hollow stump, and, my goodness me sakes alive, and some molasses cookies, she saw a lovely wax doll there.

“Oh, look!” cried Beckie. “What a sweet doll. Whose can she be?”

“Why, she’s yours, of course,” said Susie with a smile, as she wiggled her long rabbit ears.

“Oh, I only wish she was!” cried Beckie, clapping her paws. “But how do you know?”

“Oh, it’s easy enough to tell that,” answered Susie. “That doll is yours, Beckie. It must be. You see, I have a wax doll, so I don’t need another. You have no wax doll and you want one.”

“Indeed I do, very much!” exclaimed Beckie.

“Then she is yours—take her,” went on the little rabbit girl. “I’m sure she is meant for you.”

“But who could have left her here?” asked Beckie wonderingly.

But Susie did not know this, nor did Beckie. But it would not surprise me the least bit if Santa Claus himself had dropped that doll in the hollow stump. You know he often comes around a few days before Christmas to see how things are getting on and to find out what boys and girls and animal children need. So I think it’s safe to say that Santa Claus left that doll in the hollow stump for Beckie.

Anyhow, the little bear girl clasped in her paws the lovely wax doll, and then she and Susie looked at her and made her open and shut her eyes, and they felt of the soft wax in the doll’s pink cheeks, and they were both happy, especially Beckie.

“Let’s go home!” exclaimed Susie. “I’ll get my wax doll and we’ll play house.”

“All right, we will!” said Beckie.

So she and Susie, the little rabbit girl, started back through the woods, Beckie carrying her new wax doll. Well, they hadn’t gone very far before, all of a sudden, out from behind a tree, sprang the bad old skillery-scalery alligator, and he popped out into the path, in front of Beckie and Susie, and he wound his long double-jointed tail around them so they couldn’t move and there he had them fast.

“Ah, ha!” cried the bad old alligator, blinking his fishy eyes, “now I have you both, and a little baby, too.”

You see the alligator thought the doll that Beckie carried was a real 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.”