Neddie with his sharp claws quickly stripped off some white birch bark from a tree. He rolled the bark into a sort of cornucopia, large at one end and small at the other. He put the small end to his mouth.
“Toot! Toot! Toot!” went the little bear boy on the birch bark horn. Again and again he blew it. Finally Beckie said:
“I hear some one coming!”
Surely enough there was a sound in the bushes.
“Come and get us!” cried Neddie.
“I’m coming,” said a voice, and then, instead of their papa or uncle bear, out jumped the bad old skillery-scalery alligator.
“Now I have you!” he cried, snapping his teeth.
“Oh, no, you haven’t!” said Neddie. And with that he blew such a blast from the tooting horn in the face of the ’gator that the bad creature turned a somersault and a peppersault mixed together and away he ran back to the drug store, where he belonged. Then Neddie blew some more tunes on the tooting horn, and this time his papa, who was searching in the woods, heard him and came to get his little boy and girl bear.
So Neddie and Beckie weren’t lost any more, and soon they were safely home, and I’m glad to say that Beckie’s cough got no worse. And they had hot mush for supper with sweet molasses on.
And in the next story, if the lady downstairs doesn’t come up and take my typewriter to get her baby asleep with, I’ll tell you about Beckie and the hand-organ man.