No, sir!
If you should mention such a thing to him, he would tuck up his pinafore, roll up his jacket sleeves, and show you his little brown fists, in a trice!
No, sir; he never alluded to the bear, but taking a flat-iron in each hand, went whistling along as if no such animal had ever walked out of Noah's ark into the back woods.
Well, he had got through "Hail Columbia," and "Auld Lang Syne," when he spied Bruin again; and this time he was wide awake, too.
He began whistling Yankee Doodle; first, to show his independence, and secondly, because he knew if anything would take the nonsense out of the letter B, it was Yankee Doodle!
"I'll iron him with these flat-irons, anyhow," said Joe to himself, "if he comes here to eat me." But whether the bear wasn't hungry, or whether he didn't like the looks of the flat-irons, or whether Joe's house was a little too near, or whether it was all three, I can't say; all I know is that he never touched a paw to him, and Joe and his flat-irons arrived home in perfect safety.
"I'm so glad you are come, Joe," said his mother, taking the irons and putting them over the fire to heat. "I've a heap of work to do, and besides I felt uneasy like, after you went off alone through the woods, for fear you might possibly meet a bear."
"I did," said Joe, quietly whittling away at his arrow.
"Did? Sakes alive! Where? how? when? Did he bite you?" and she caught him up by the waistband and held him up to the light, and turned him round to see where he was damaged.
Joe told her all about it, and she flew and bolted all the doors, and every now and then she'd set down her flat-iron, and putting her arms a-kimbo, say, "Sakes alive! 'spose that bear had ate him up?" That night she insisted on his eating a whole pie for supper, gave him two lumps of white sugar, and put an extra blanket on his bed, and all night long she was traveling back and forth in her night cap, from her bed to his, to feel if Joe was safe between the sheets.