Part 8

Now, the lion had some good in him, after all, and when he saw how much Beckie was suffering, he handed her the bottle of cough medicine. Beckie took some, and it stopped her cough at once, but she made such a funny face when she swallowed it that the lion cried:

“Ha! That must be fine stuff to have you make such a funny face. I must look into this. Yes, indeed!”

“Would you like some of my cough medicine?” asked Beckie, hoping the lion would take some. She knew what it would do to him.

“Indeed, I will,” the lion said; “I’ll drink the whole bottle full of pink stuff, and then you’ll see what a queer face I’ll make.”

So the lion tipped up the bottle of bitter, sour, pink cough medicine and swallowed it all at once. Of course it wasn’t meant to be taken that way—not even by a lion—all at once.

And such a face as the lion made! It was seven different kinds of a face at once, and then the lion howled and roared and said, “Oh, dear!” for his throat seemed to be on fire.

And then, without trying to bother Beckie any more, out of the window the lion jumped, to run off to find some ice water, so his throat wouldn’t burn from the cough medicine.

Of course Beckie’s medicine was all gone, but it did not matter, for her cold was soon better. I don’t know whether it was from the medicine she took, or whether the lion scared the cold away.

Anyhow, Beckie got all well, and the lion didn’t bother her again for more than a week.

And, if the bag of peanuts doesn’t step on the elephant’s toe and make him sneeze, I’ll tell you next about Neddie and the tooting horn.

STORY XXI NEDDIE AND THE TOOTING HORN

“Mamma, can’t Beckie come out and play?” asked Neddie, the little bear boy, as he ran home from school one afternoon. “I came home early on purpose. It was such a nice, sunny day that teacher said I might come out before the others, to amuse Beckie.”

“That was very kind of you,” spoke Mrs. Stubtail, “and I think I will let Beckie out a little while. But you must look after her, and see that she does not stay late, for it gets cold after the sun goes down, and you know she is hardly over her cough yet.”

“Oh, I’ll be careful of her,” said Neddie, and he was so glad he could take out his little sick sister, that he stood up on the end of his short, stubby tail.

That is, Neddie tried to stand on the end of his tail, but the truth of the matter is, my dear little friends, that Neddie was getting to be such a fat, heavy little chap of a bear cub that his tail would not hold him any more.

So over he fell, ker-thump-o! But he landed in a pile of leaves so he was not hurt at all.

“Don’t let Beckie try that, Neddie,” said Mrs. Stubtail, with a laugh. “She is only just out of a sick bed, you know.”

“I won’t!” laughed Neddie, as he picked himself up and brushed off the leaves. You know I told you, in the story before this one, how Beckie had to take some pink, bitter medicine for her cough that Dr. Possum gave her. Hold on, I don’t mean that Dr. Possum gave her the cough—no, he gave her the medicine to cure it. And a bad lion got in after Beckie, and he swallowed the whole bottle of medicine and that gave him such a conniption fit that he was glad to leave the little girl bear alone.

So while Neddie waited outside the bear cave, Mrs. Stubtail went inside to get Beckie ready to take a little walk in the woods.

“Oh, it is just lovely to get out again, after being in the house so long!” sighed Beckie, as she walked along with her brother Neddie, holding his paw.

Neddie was as nice as could be, and he walked slowly with his sister who had been ill, taking good care that she did not stumble over a stick or a stone.

On and on they went, and pretty soon, when Neddie was thinking it was about time to start for home with his sister, all of a sudden they heard a tooting horn in the woods.

“Hark! what’s that?” cried Beckie, giving a jump.

“I don’t know,” answered Neddie, and he looked all around, ready to run in case there should be danger.

“Maybe it’s a hunter and his dogs,” suggested Beckie. “Oh, Neddie, I’m so frightened!”

“Don’t be frightened, Beckie,” he said gently. “I’ll take care of you. Maybe, after all, it’s only the nice trained bear, George, and the professor man who toots on his brass horn.”

“Oh, but if it’s he maybe he’ll want to take us back to the circus barn,” went on Beckie. “I wouldn’t like that.”

“Nor I,” said Neddie. “But I don’t believe it is. Let’s take a look.”

So the two bear children looked all around, and then they heard the tooting horn again. And this time they saw who was blowing it. It was a hunter man, and he had his gun and his dog with him.

“Quick! Jump behind this big tree!” cried Neddie, and he helped Beckie to hide herself. They were only just in time, too, for just then the hunter looked around, and he might have seen the bear children, except for the tree.

Then the hunter blew his horn again, and, not seeing anything to shoot, he whistled to his dog, put his gun over his shoulder and slinging the horn by his side, down the hill he went, leaving Beckie and Neddie alone. And, oh, how happy they were!

“Well, I’m glad that’s over,” said Beckie, with a long breath. “We won’t come to these woods again.”

“I guess not,” said Neddie. “Let’s hurry home.”

“What kind of a horn was it that the hunter man had?” asked Beckie, as she and her brother took hold of paws again, and started for home. “It wasn’t at all like the one the professor man blew on. His was brass.”

“I know it,” answered Neddie, “and this one was made of birch bark, rolled up like a cornucopia such as come on Christmas trees. Only those are filled with candy, and this one had nothing but air in it.”

“I see,” said Beckie. “And can you blow on a birch bark horn, Neddie?”

“I can blow a little bit on that kind of a horn,” said Neddie. “But we’d better not stop now to try it. Let’s hurry home.”

So the two little bear children went on, over hills and dales, and through the woods.

Now, whether they were not careful to take the right path, or whether the hunter and his dog and gun had so scared them that they didn’t know what they were doing, I can’t begin to say. It might have been one thing, and then, again, on the other hand, it might have been something else. And I don’t want to make a mistake.

Anyhow, the first thing Beckie and Neddie realized was that they were lost. They didn’t know where they were, nor how to get home. All they knew was that they were in the woods, some distance from home, and night was coming on.

“Oh, dear!” cried Beckie, when she saw that Neddie did not know his way home. “Oh, dear me!”

“Don’t worry, sister dear,” he said. “I’ll take care of you,” and he put his paws about her.

“Oh, I know you will,” said Beckie, “and you are as kind as you can be; but, still, and with all that, if I stay out after dark my cold may get worse again, and I’ll have to take more of that bitter medicine.”

“You can’t!” exclaimed Neddie. “The bad lion swallowed it all for you!”

“Oh, but Dr. Possum can make plenty more, and maybe worse than that!” cried Beckie. “Oh, dear! Where is our home? It’s lost!”

“No, it’s we who are lost,” said Neddie, with a laugh. “Our house is just where it always was.” And he giggled again. He didn’t feel very much like laughing, you know, but he did it to cheer up his little sister. It’s a good thing to laugh, sometimes, even when you don’t feel like it.

Well, it kept getting darker and darker, and Beckie was more and more frightened, even though Neddie was as jolly as he could be. Finally he said:

“We’ll just call for help. Mr. Whitewash, the polar bear, or our papa, or Uncle Wigwag might be roaming through these woods, and they’d hear us and take us home.”

“Oh, then, holler as loudly as you can,” said Beckie. “Perhaps mamma, or Aunt Piffy, is out looking for us.”

So the two little bear children called as loudly as they could. Again and again they shouted, but only the echoes answered them.

“It’s of no use!” said Beckie, and she was almost ready to cry, for her cough was hurting her again. Then Neddie thought of something.

“I have it!” he cried. “I’ll make a tooting horn out of birch bark, like the one the hunter man had. I’ll blow on the horn, and surely some one will hear that.”

“Oh, goodie!” cried Beckie, clapping her paws. Then she felt better.

Neddie with his sharp claws quickly stripped off some white birch bark from a tree. He rolled the bark into a sort of cornucopia, large at one end and small at the other. He put the small end to his mouth.

“Toot! Toot! Toot!” went the little bear boy on the birch bark horn. Again and again he blew it. Finally Beckie said:

“I hear some one coming!”

Surely enough there was a sound in the bushes.

“Come and get us!” cried Neddie.

“I’m coming,” said a voice, and then, instead of their papa or uncle bear, out jumped the bad old skillery-scalery alligator.

“Now I have you!” he cried, snapping his teeth.

“Oh, no, you haven’t!” said Neddie. And with that he blew such a blast from the tooting horn in the face of the ’gator that the bad creature turned a somersault and a peppersault mixed together and away he ran back to the drug store, where he belonged. Then Neddie blew some more tunes on the tooting horn, and this time his papa, who was searching in the woods, heard him and came to get his little boy and girl bear.

So Neddie and Beckie weren’t lost any more, and soon they were safely home, and I’m glad to say that Beckie’s cough got no worse. And they had hot mush for supper with sweet molasses on.

And in the next story, if the lady downstairs doesn’t come up and take my typewriter to get her baby asleep with, I’ll tell you about Beckie and the hand-organ man.

STORY XXII BECKIE AND THE HAND-ORGAN MAN

“Beckie,” said Mrs. Stubtail, the lady bear, as she came into the sitting-room in the cave-house where the little cub girl was playing with her rubber doll; “Beckie, I wonder if you are well enough to go to the store for me?”

“Of course I am, mamma,” answered Beckie. “My cold and cough is all cured now. I can go to school next week, I think.”

“I hope so,” said Mrs. Stubtail, “for you have been very ill.”

I told you, you know, about how Beckie had to take some very bitter, sour medicine, and how she fooled the bad lion with it.

And, since her illness, Beckie had not been to school. But she was better now, and that’s why Mrs. Stubtail thought perhaps the little bear girl could go to school.

“Well, as long as you think you are able to be out,” went on the mamma bear, “I’d like you to bring me a cake of yeast. I want to bake some bread.

“I would go to the store for it myself,” went on Mrs. Stubtail, “only I have to stay in the house, since Aunt Piffy is visiting over at Mrs. Wibblewobble’s duck pond, and I expect Mrs. Bow Wow the dog lady might call this afternoon. That’s why I asked you to go for the yeast, Beckie.”

“Oh, mamma, I don’t in the least mind,” said Beckie, politely. “I think the walk will do me good. It is a nice day, though it does look as though it were going to snow. And I’ll take my doll, Isabella Trolleycar Jamkitchen, along with me. She needs the air, too.”

“Well, wrap up warmly,” spoke Mrs. Stubtail, “and don’t catch any more cold.”

“No, and I won’t let the cold catch me!” laughed Beckie, as she looked for her little red jacket, hanging on the hat rack.

So the little bear girl started off through the woods to go to the store for a yeast cake for her mamma.

The store was kept by a nice, kind old pussycat lady, and when Beckie got there the pussycat was just drinking a saucer of warm milk.

“Would you like some, my dear?” asked she of Beckie.

“Thank you, I would,” said the little bear girl, politely.

So before buying her yeast cake, Beckie had some nice, warm milk, and a molasses cookie, which the cat lady storekeeper baked all by her own self.

“Now be careful, and don’t lose your change,” said the lady cat, as she gave the pennies to Beckie. “And put the yeast cake in your pocket, where it won’t fall out.”

“I will,” answered Beckie.

Off she started for home, with the pennies and the silver-covered yeast cake rattling about in her pocket. Now a yeast cake, as I guess you all know, is something to make a loaf of bread light and fluffy. The yeast makes the bread all full of little holes, so that the butter won’t fall off it when you spread it on.

Well, Beckie was going along, thinking how much nicer it was to be well than ill, and she was wondering what the animal girls would say to her when she went back to the school, when, all of a sudden, Beckie heard some one crying behind a clump of bushes.

“My goodness!” cried the little bear girl. “That’s a man!”

You see she could tell right away that it was no animal crying.

“Yes, it’s a man!” thought Beckie, and she got ready to run as soon as she could see which way to go, so as not to run into the man. For most men, Beckie knew, would like to carry away a little bear cub like herself.

Then Beckie heard the crying again and a voice said:

“Oh, dear! How sad I am. Poor George has run away and left me!”

“George!” thought Beckie. “Why, that was the name of the nice, tame, trained bear that Neddie and I ran off to travel with some time ago. I wonder if that man can be the Professor who blew on the shiny, brass horn?”

So Beckie peeked around the corner of the bramble briar bush, behind which the crying man was hiding, and she saw that he wasn’t the Professor gentleman at all.

He was a hand-organ man, with a nice fur coat, and he was crying as hard as he could cry, that man was.

“I don’t think he’d be cruel to me,” thought Beckie. “Anyhow, he’s in trouble, and maybe I can help him. Besides, hand-organ men most always have monkeys, and if they are kind to the monkeys they’ll probably be kind to little bear girls. I’m going to ask him if I can help him.”

Just then the hand-organ man cried again, and said:

“Oh, dear! Oh, George, why did you ever run away and leave me?”

Oh, I forgot to tell you that the reason Beckie knew the crying man played a hand-organ was because there was a hand-organ standing up against a tree near him. Only he wasn’t playing it just then. You can’t very well play a hand-organ and cry at the same time. At least I never saw any one do it, though, of course, it may be done.

“What is the matter, hand-organ man?” asked Beckie, politely, making a little bow, as she stepped in front of him. “Why do you cry, and who is George? Was he a little bear?”

“Oh, no,” said the man, who could understand bear talk, and speak it, too. “No, George was not a bear. He was a monkey, and he used to do lots of tricks as I played the music. But he has run away and left me.”

Then Beckie noticed that there was no monkey with the hand-organ, as there should have been, by rights.

“So you are crying for George; is that it?” she asked the man who was wiping away his tears on the back of his cap.

“That is just why, little bear girl,” he said. “I have no monkey to do funny tricks when I play the music, and, unless I have a monkey, the people will not give me pennies. Oh, I have no money, I can’t get any, and I am so hungry.”

“Poor hand-organ man!” exclaimed Beckie. “Maybe I could be a monkey for you.”

“You!” exclaimed the man. “Why, you are too big. But I thank you just the same.”

“I know I am a little larger than a monkey,” said Beckie, “but I can do tricks. I learned them from some circus animals, when my brother Neddie and I ran away with a bear named George. At first I thought you meant the bear George.”

“No, my monkey was named George, too,” said the hand-organ man. “But let me see you do some tricks.”

So Beckie danced around in the woods, and played soldier, as she had seen the bear George do, and she climbed a tall tree and then she stood on her hind paws and begged like a little poodle dog, and the man exclaimed:

“Why, that’s just fine! Now we’ll have a little music!”

So he played a jolly tune and Beckie did more tricks. Then the man said:

“Will you come with me for a while, little bear girl, and do tricks for the people while I play? In that way I may get some pennies, even if I have no monkey.”

“Yes, I will come with you for a little while,” said Beckie, “but I can not stay very long, for my mamma expects me home with the yeast cake.”

So Beckie went with the hand-organ man, down to the city where he played. And such nice tricks as the little bear girl did! The hand-organ man said she was better than his monkey, and I guess the boys and girls who saw Beckie climb a telegraph pole thought so too. Anyhow, the man got lots of pennies, which Beckie took up in his cap, passing it around in her paws.

Then it was time for her to go home, but the hand-organ man was sorry to have her leave him.

“Maybe I’ll help you again some day,” said Beckie.

“I hope so,” said the man, and he didn’t cry any more, for he had many pennies to buy food. And he gave Beckie half of the pennies for her own self. Wasn’t he good?

And on the way home a bad old tiger from the circus chased Beckie, but she threw the bright, shining yeast cake at him, and the tiger thought it was a bullet from a bang-bang gun, and he was so frightened for fear he might get shot that he ran off and left Beckie alone.

Then she picked up the yeast cake, which was only bent sideways a little bit, and got safely home with it, and it made a nice loaf of bread.

And on the next page, if the wallpaper doesn’t jump down off the ceiling and go to sleep in the baby’s crib, I’ll tell you about Neddie playing the piano.

STORY XXIII NEDDIE PLAYS THE PIANO

“Come, Neddie!” cried Mamma Stubtail, the lady bear, one day, as she went to the door of the cave-house and looked out in front where Neddie, the little boy bear, was playing football. “It’s time to practice your music lesson, Neddie.”

“Oh, dear!” cried the little bear boy. “I wish I was a player-piano!”

“What a funny wish!” said Beckie, who was taking her doll, Elizabeth Jane Huckleberrypie, out for a walk.

“Why do you want to be a player-piano, Neddie?”

“Then I wouldn’t have to practice my music lesson,” said the little bear boy.

However, since his mamma had called him, Neddie started to go in. Then Tommie and Joie Kat, the kitten boys, and Jackie and Peetie Bow Wow, the puppy dog boys, called to him:

“Where you going, Neddie?”

“I have to practice my music lesson,” he answered, and he went into the cave-house, but he didn’t feel very happy. He sat down to the piano, and he began to play:

“Tinkle-tinkle tinkle-tink! Dum-te dum-dum dum-dum doo! Plinko-plunko smasho-bang! How I wish that I was through!”

That’s the kind of a tune Neddie had to play for his exercise music practice lesson, and really he didn’t do it well at all. For you see he was anxious to go back to play football with the boy animals.

And that’s often the way it is when real boys and girls have to practice music lessons. I wish it were not so, for there is nothing nicer in this world than music, and in order to play it well you have to practice. And some day, if you take music lessons, you’ll be glad that you did run up and down the piano keyboard with your fingers when you had much rather be out having games with your friends. For it is very nice to be able to play tunes.

But Neddie didn’t think so as he sat on the piano stool, drumming away, and looking at the clock, every now and then to see when his time would be up, so that he could go out and play with his animal friends.

Finally the clock struck five and Neddie finished his practice with a bang. It wasn’t music at all, but he did not care.

“Hurray!” he cried. “Practice is over. Now I can have some fun!”

Out of doors he rushed and more than ever he wished he were a player-piano, so that all he’d have to do would be to jump up and down with his feet when he wanted music. That is a good way to make nice sounds, too, on the player-piano, and I can play one or two pieces myself, that way. But, oh, how I wish I could play by hand!

However, Neddie’s friends were glad to see him come out again. They played football and nearly broke the window in Mrs. Wibblewobble’s duck pen, so that she had to run out and call to them:

“Now, boys, you must go right away from here. Play football somewhere else.”

So Neddie, the little bear boy, and his friends had to move along and look for a vacant lot where they could kick around their football without breaking any windows.

That night, when Mr. Stubtail, the bear papa, came home, he asked Neddie:

“Did everything go all right in school to-day?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Neddie politely.

“And when you came home did you practice your music lesson?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Neddie, and he was glad he had not skipped it, as he sometimes did.

“Very good,” said Mr. Stubtail. “Then on Saturday afternoon I will take you and Beckie to a nice moving picture show.”

“Oh, joy!” cried Beckie, clapping her paws.

“Oh, happiness!” said Neddie, and he was glad again that he had not missed his music practice.

Well, that night, after Neddie had finished his home school-work, he wanted to sit up a little longer to read a fairy story. His mamma let him do this, but when it came time for Neddie to go to bed, he had not finished the story. So he begged:

“Oh, can’t I stay up just a little longer, mamma?”

Then, as he had been such a good boy, Mrs. Stubtail said that he might, so Neddie settled down into the deep-cushioned easy chair, and read all about how the pink fairy turned herself into a pumpkin and rolled down hill so the giant couldn’t make a Jack-o’-lantern of her.

And then quite a lot of things happened. Mrs. Kat, the mother of Tommie and Joie and Kittie Kat, came in to call on Mrs. Stubtail. And Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, came to ask Aunt Piffy what the old lady bear did for dyspepsia when she ate cheese for supper. And Grandfather Goosey Gander came in to play a game of Scotch checkers with Uncle Wigwag, while Mr. Whitewash, the Polar bear, went out to look for a cake of ice on which to sleep, for, he always liked things cold, you know.

And there were so many things going on that no one thought anything about Neddie. There he sat in the big chair, reading the fairy story until he fell asleep. Then, as it happened, all the company went home at once and in a hurry, and when Papa and Mamma Stubtail locked up the cave-house, and put the cat down cellar, no one thought that Neddie was asleep in the big chair. His sister Beckie had gone up to bed some time ago, and every one thought Neddie was in bed also.

So upstairs in the cave-house went all the big folks, not knowing that Neddie was in the chair. And there he stayed until it got real late and dark. And, oh, so quiet was it in the house! Why, you could have heard a pin drop, if any one had let one fall.

All of a sudden Neddie awakened. He sat up with a jump, and looked all around in the dark. Of course he couldn’t see anything, for it was all black.

Then, hardly knowing where he was, Neddie rubbed his eyes with his paws, but still he could scarcely see. Then he noticed a little light from the street lamp outside, shining in through the window, and he could tell where he was.

“Why!” he exclaimed, “I’m home, in my own house! I fell asleep in the big chair. Huh! I guess I’d better go up to bed!”

Neddie stretched himself, and was wondering if he could find his room in the dark, without waking every one up, including Mr. Whitewash, who was asleep on a cake of ice, when, all of a sudden, Neddie heard a noise. It was right under the window, near which he had been sleeping, and he listened to a voice, saying:

“Now we’ll break in through the back door, and we’ll take Neddie and Beckie and carry them off to our den and never let them out again.”