"Oh, I'm think I'm tell one, two, three, four bear story until your aunt go home, and ole Antoine she laugh."
"How are you going to begin, Aunt Florence?" asked Betty, as Antoine and Billy came toward them hand in hand. "They say he won't promise not to drink; he just will spend every cent he can get when he wants to. Now what are you going to say?"
"Oh, Betty, I don't know how to begin a bit better than you do, but for the sake of those five children somebody ought to try to do something besides laugh at such a man, and I shall try."
"But, auntie, how will you begin?"
"You must wait, Betty, and see."
"Excuse me," Antoine began, "but I'm think I'm tell my friend Beely one bear story. I guess I'm tell you about the white bear. When I'm a little fellow, not so old as you, Beely, my brother have a pet bear. It was so high and so big and his colour was brown."
"Brown," repeated Billy, "I thought you said it was white."
"Maybe so, maybe so, Beely. Well, we all like the little brown bear but my ma, and she don't like that bear so much as I like the switch she always keep on the corner behind the flour barrel. My brother would have the bear on the house, and my ma scold and scold, because that bear get into all kind of troubles. He steal lump of sugar and he eat the codfish, and he help hisself to anything she want.
"Well, Beely, one day my ma hear big noise on what you call the pantry, and that noise, Beely, was near the flour barrel, and when she go over to see what was the matter out jump a little white bear. He was the same little brown bear, Beely, all cover over with flour. My ma was so mad at that bear she ain't know what to do after he spoil all that flour. So she grab the broom, and she chase the bear all over the kitchen. She hit him whack-e-ty whack, Beely, until the poor little bear was pretty near scare to dead, and the air was all full of flour, and everything was all tip over and tumble down and upset, and my ma she look like a crazy woman. By and by she open the door, the little bear scoot out and climb a tree, and then he sit and look on my mother while she stand there and scold him.