You would have thought that each of the children had been presented with a fine present, they received this proposition with such delight and so many chuckles. Down they all got in a bunch, with Aunt Fanny in the midst. Then she clasped her hands over her knees, made her mouth into a button-hole, and looked up at a corner of the ceiling, pretending to think. She looked so long, that Fred, full of Johnny Goodfellow and his story, quite forgot he was speaking to Aunt Fanny, and shouted—
“Come, old fellow! we’re all waiting; why don’t you begin?”
Then suddenly remembering himself, he turned as red as scarlet, and stammered out—
“Oh, I didn’t mean—— I beg your pardon.”
The button-hole mouth broke loose, and Aunt Fanny burst out laughing, as she said—
“That was just what I wanted. Now, attention, squad! Aunt Fanny has jumped over the moon, and Johnny Goodfellow is here in her place to tell you the wonderful tale, a good deal altered, which he read in an English magazine, called
“BROTHER BOB’S BEAR.”
Once upon a time, a Yankee farmer found he had such a lot of children, that they cost him more than they were worth. So he concluded to emigrate out West, where the old ones could shoot game and plant corn and keep out of mischief, and the young ones could laugh and grow fat by rolling on the prairies and eating hasty-pudding.
He found that he was well enough off, when he got to his new home, to build a very aristocratic log-house. Very few, you know, have more than one room, while his had three—all elegantly ceiled with hemlock-bark, with the smooth side out—quite gorgeous, you may believe.