“Yes, we can, and take it home! Oh, dear little bear!” cried Essie.
The children sat down by the little fellow in the leaves, and gave themselves up to perfect delight. They examined his ears, and his paws with the long claws, and they smoothed and poored his thick fur, and put their faces down to his; and then they rubbed his little stomach while he lay on his back with his feet curled up in the air, enjoying it all, winking and blinking—the most lovable little brown rogue ever to be seen! Sometimes he lay still, then again he moved in the leaves, sleepy, snuffling, nuzzling.
“Is he too heavy for us to carry?” asked Ally. “If I stoop, and you put his arms round my neck, and I take him pick-a-back?”
Essie shook her head. “I don’t believe he would like to be carried that way. What if we put him in our basket? He’d like lying on the leaves.”
“Why, yes,” said Ally. “He’s always lying on leaves and grass. Let’s do it. We oughtn’t to let him stay out here in the woods all night, all alone.”
“Of course not,” said Essie. “What a bad mother he must have had to go and leave him here!”
“Perhaps some hunter shot her,” said Ally.
Pitiful, the twins stroked him again and put their dear little faces close to his; and the little bear cuddled and snuggled and uttered a soft sound of pleasure.
But the soft sound quite changed its character when they began to try and lift the little fat lump into the basket. “Oh, Ally! he’s growling!” Essie cried. “Hear him!” and she went off in gales of laughter; it really was amusing—that little ineffectual growl.
The children tugged and lugged and lifted and hauled him till they had him on the side of the half-tipped basket, then they tipped it back, and he rolled in, on the leaves. Next they stripped off their aprons and tied them across the basket so that he might neither spill out nor jump out.