The Joyous Story of Toto. Richards Laura Elizabeth Howe

supper, for I knew when I started that I should be late, and I was looking forward to a very comfortable evening.

      “Well, when I came to the door of my cave, what should I see but an old man with a long gray beard, sitting on the ground eating my honey!” Here the bear looked around with a deeply injured air, and there was a general murmur of sympathy.

      “Your course was obvious!” said the raccoon. “Why didn’t you eat him, stupid?”

      “Hush!” whispered the wood-pigeon softly. “You must not say things like that, Coon! you will frighten the old lady.” And indeed, the grandmother seemed much discomposed by the raccoon’s suggestion.

      “Wouldn’t have been polite!” replied Bruin. “My own house, you know, and all that. Besides,” he added in an undertone, with an apprehensive glance at the grandmother, “he was old, and probably very – ”

      “Ahem!” said Toto in a warning voice.

      “Oh, certainly not!” said the bear hastily, “not upon any account. I was about to make the same remark myself. A – where was I?”

      “The old man was eating your honey,” said the woodchuck.

      “Of course!” replied Bruin. “So, though I would not have hurt him for the world” (with another glance towards the grandmother), “I thought there would be no harm in frightening him a little. Accordingly, I first made a great noise among the bushes, snapping the twigs and 52 rustling the leaves at a great rate. He stopped eating, and looked and listened, listened and looked; didn’t seem to like it much, I thought. Then, when he was pretty thoroughly roused, I came slowly forward, and planted myself directly in front of the cave.”

      “Dear me!” cried the grandmother. “How very dreadful! poor old man!”

      “Well now, ma’am!” said Bruin appealingly, “he had no right to steal my honey; now had he? And I didn’t hurt a hair of his head,” he continued. “I only stood up on my hind-legs and waved my fore-paws round and round like a windmill, and roared.”

      A general burst of merriment greeted this statement, from all except the grandmother, who shuddered in sympathy with the unfortunate hermit.

      “Well?” asked Toto, “and what did he do then?”

      “Why,” said Bruin, “he crouched down in a little heap on the ground, and squeezed himself against the wall of the cave, evidently expecting 53 me to rush upon him and tear him to pieces; I sat down in front of him and looked at him for a few minutes; then, when I thought he had had about enough, I walked past him into the cave, and then he ran away. He has never made me another visit.”