Well, Beckie was going along, thinking how much nicer it was to be well than ill, and she was wondering what the animal girls would say to her when she went back to the school, when, all of a sudden, Beckie heard some one crying behind a clump of bushes.
“My goodness!” cried the little bear girl. “That’s a man!”
You see she could tell right away that it was no animal crying.
“Yes, it’s a man!” thought Beckie, and she got ready to run as soon as she could see which way to go, so as not to run into the man. For most men, Beckie knew, would like to carry away a little bear cub like herself.
Then Beckie heard the crying again and a voice said:
“Oh, dear! How sad I am. Poor George has run away and left me!”
“George!” thought Beckie. “Why, that was the name of the nice, tame, trained bear that Neddie and I ran off to travel with some time ago. I wonder if that man can be the Professor who blew on the shiny, brass horn?”
So Beckie peeked around the corner of the bramble briar bush, behind which the crying man was hiding, and she saw that he wasn’t the Professor gentleman at all.
He was a hand-organ man, with a nice fur coat, and he was crying as hard as he could cry, that man was.
“I don’t think he’d be cruel to me,” thought Beckie. “Anyhow, he’s in trouble, and maybe I can help him. Besides, hand-organ men most always have monkeys, and if they are kind to the monkeys they’ll probably be kind to little bear girls. I’m going to ask him if I can help him.”