Pietro waddled into the kitchen and sat up like a dog to beg. A bear is a foolish looking beast at best, unless it becomes ill-tempered; and this big brown thing, so his smiling master said, "had the heart of a child."
"And the stomach of an ostrich!" declared Janice, after almost every cold scrap in the house had followed several slices of "bread-butter" down Pietro's cavernous maw.
The old fellow was as good-natured as he could be. After the feast he went through his little repertoire of tricks with little urging.
He "played soldier" and went through his own particular manual of arms with his master's stick as a gun. He "played dead," but with his little pig-like eyes twinkling all the time.
Finally he danced with his master, and with such abandon, if not grace, that the dishes rattled on the shelves in the kitchen cupboard.
"There, that will do. He's paid for his supper. Next thing he'll have the house down about our ears," declared Mr. Broxton Day.
"Grazias, Signore; grazias, Signora," said the bear trainer, over and over again, and bowing deeply as he jerked Pietro by the chain toward the door.
His eyes, his teeth, and the little gold rings in his ears, all twinkled together. Janice thought he was a very polite man.
"And I hope he is always kind to Pietro," she said, when the foreigner and his strange pet were gone. "But, Daddy! Don't we have the greatest happenings in our house?"
"Right you are, my dear. An aristocratic lady has left us flat; the neighborhood censor has washed her hands of us; and we have entertained a highly educated bear, all in a single day. As you might say, all these astonishing happenings are 'all in the Days' work.' The Days certainly do entertain the most astonishing adventures."