The Bear Family at Home, and How the Circus Came to Visit Them

by Curtis Dwight Wilbur

And the little Cub Bear said, "What can you do?"

"Well," he said, "I don't know. I can't dig in the dirt, because when I am at home I live in the water. Sometimes I stay all day in the water, with nothing but the end of my nose above the surface, and then I can stay under the water a long while without coming to the surface at all."

The Cub Bear said, "That is just like the whale."

And the hippopotamus said, "Yes, just like the whale; only when I come to the surface, I don't make such a big blowing sound as the whale does."

Well, the little Cub Bear thought a long while, and he couldn't think of anything the hippopotamus could do.

So he said to his papa, "Papa, can you tell me what the hittopotamus can do to help us in building our house?"

And the Papa Bear said, "I don't know. I think if he would go down and live in the lake above the dam that the beaver built, that would be the best place for him, and he could help the beaver to make the dam higher, and then when the beaver went to sleep the hippopotamus could make some kind of a noise to warn us when people were coming."

So the hippopotamus agreed that he would do this, and he went down to the lake. Just before he left he said, "I am very hungry, and I would like something to eat."

The little Cub Bear said, "We have plenty of meat here, if you would like some meat."