“You can’t!” exclaimed Neddie. “The bad lion swallowed it all for you!”
“Oh, but Dr. Possum can make plenty more, and maybe worse than that!” cried Beckie. “Oh, dear! Where is our home? It’s lost!”
“No, it’s we who are lost,” said Neddie, with a laugh. “Our house is just where it always was.” And he giggled again. He didn’t feel very much like laughing, you know, but he did it to cheer up his little sister. It’s a good thing to laugh, sometimes, even when you don’t feel like it.
Well, it kept getting darker and darker, and Beckie was more and more frightened, even though Neddie was as jolly as he could be. Finally he said:
“We’ll just call for help. Mr. Whitewash, the polar bear, or our papa, or Uncle Wigwag might be roaming through these woods, and they’d hear us and take us home.”
“Oh, then, holler as loudly as you can,” said Beckie. “Perhaps mamma, or Aunt Piffy, is out looking for us.”
So the two little bear children called as loudly as they could. Again and again they shouted, but only the echoes answered them.
“It’s of no use!” said Beckie, and she was almost ready to cry, for her cough was hurting her again. Then Neddie thought of something.
“I have it!” he cried. “I’ll make a tooting horn out of birch bark, like the one the hunter man had. I’ll blow on the horn, and surely some one will hear that.”
“Oh, goodie!” cried Beckie, clapping her paws. Then she felt better.