When the cub got out of doors where he could run about and exercise, he began to grow very rapidly in stature. Before, he had been a football or a bundle of fur, but now he began to put on the semblance of a bear.
He also developed a great genius for mischief. If I should tell of all the things he overturned or upset, this chapter would be endless.
A naturalist, who has reared several bear-cubs, says, "If you have an enemy, give him a bear-cub. His punishment will be adequate, no matter what his offense." But the young farmer and his wife did not think so, and as for the baby who was now learning to walk, "Bar-Bar," as he called the young bruin, was a never-ending source of delight.
He would bury his wee hands in the fuzzy hair of the cub and pull with all his might, and the cub would growl with make-believe fury, but it seemed to know that the baby did not intend to hurt it, and did not offer to bite. When the baby pulled its ears too hard, it would simply run away.
Outside, in the farmyard, among the chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese, at first the cub was rather shy, for the gobbler turkey, the gander and the rooster all set upon him and drove him whining into the woodshed; but he soon learned that all were afraid of his paws, when he stood upon his hind legs and really hit out with them, so after that discovery, he was master of all the feathered folk about the farmhouse.
All about the farm-buildings the little bear followed his master. But best of all he liked to go to the stable and watch the milking, for in one corner was a small dish, into which he knew a pint of warm milk would be poured as soon as milking was done.
One morning the farmer heard a great noise in the hen-house. The hens were kedacuting for dear life and he hastened to the scene of the disturbance. What he discovered was both ludicrous and annoying, for there by one of the nests was his small bear in the act of pawing out an egg, while the empty shell of another upon the ground told only too plainly that he had discovered the use of eggs.
After that the hen-house was never quite safe from him. Whenever he was caught inside, he was punished, but hens' nests that he found out-of-doors were considered his natural plunder.
June came, and the latter part of the month the bear-shadow followed its master into the hayfield. Here it made a discovery that was much to its liking.
The bear was sniffing about as usual, poking his nose into all the holes and bushes, when a low humming in the grass near by caught his ear.