“Why, it’s the same way with guiding a bicycle,” chimed Little Black Bear. “I know when I first began to ride in the circus I used to grip the handle bars like everything, but—”
And so—having become fast friends—Shagg and Little Black Bear visited on through the hours, their voices mingling with the song of the saw, the ring of the hammer, and all the happy sounds that came to the clearing from the depths of the forest below.
Little by little the morning advanced. Little by little the shadows crept nearer the rocks and the trees. Little by little the thing on the sawhorses became more like a chair. And then, just as the last touch was added, the soft hum of noontide was broken by a voice that came from neither here nor there nor, for that matter, from any particular direction at all.
“Shagg—ee! Shagg—ee!” it called in an odd, muffled note that seemed very near and yet far away.
“All right, mother! Coming, mother!” roared Shagg as if in reply.
“Hurry, then, before the dinner gets cold,” again called the voice, and this time Little Black Bear realized that it came right up from the ground.
“Indeed, we will,” declared the big fellow as he put down his hammer and untied his apron. “Come, now—”
“Oh, thank you very much,” protested Little Black Bear, “but really, I have my lunch right here in my paper bag.”
“Nonsense!” insisted Shagg, “why mother wouldn’t hear to me leaving you up here. So come along with you.” And leading the way to the far edge of the clearing, Shagg uncovered an iron ring, raised a heavy trap door, and the two descended a well-worn flight of winding stone steps until they came to a great, rugged room that was almost as broad as the clearing above.
It required but a glance for Little Black Bear to see that the place in which he so suddenly found himself was a cave. There to the right was what had once been its entrance but which had at some time or other been turned into a window—a window that was framed with trailing wild roses and through which he could see the trees of the forest and the bright green of the grass underneath. On that side of the cave that was across from the stairway rose a huge fireplace and in front of it—her back turned toward them, and slowly stirring the contents of a very fat and very round pot that hung over the flames—bent Mrs. Shagg.