“Oh, now I see!” cried Neddie. “Well, I’m glad it’s snowing, for we can have some fun, making snow men, and building forts and sliding down hill.”
“I’m glad, too!” exclaimed Tommie Kat, the kitten boy, “for it will soon be Christmas, and I always like snow at Christmas.”
Everybody else at the magic lantern show said the same thing, and soon they had started for their homes, because it kept snowing harder all the while, and they did not want to get snowed in.
Neddie Stubtail, the little bear boy, hurried along, kicking his paws through the snow, and thinking what fun he would have with his sister Beckie on their way to school next morning.
“I’ll get out my sled and pull Beckie,” thought Neddie. He would do this, you see, because Beckie could not come to the magic lantern show.
Well, Neddie was walking along, and he was putting out his tongue and letting the snowflakes melt on it, sort of tickling himself like, when, all of a sudden, Neddie heard a roaring sound, and a voice cried:
“Ah, ha! Now I’ve got you. You shan’t fool me this time by covering yourself with flour and making believe you’re a Polar bear. I’m after you!” And out from behind a snowbank rushed the bad old circus lion who had chased Neddie and Beckie the night before, when they were on their way home from the Kat party.
“Oh, my!” exclaimed Neddie. “I guess I’d better run!” And run he did, through the snow, as fast as he could. But the lion ran, too, and he was almost catching up to Neddie, when, all at once, the little bear came to the edge of a hill.
He came to it so suddenly that he couldn’t stop himself, and the first thing the little bear knew he slid over the top of the hill. Down he fell, right into the middle of a big bank of snow, on the other side.
Now a snowbank isn’t hard like the iron bank in which you put your pennies, and so Neddie wasn’t hurt the least mite, I’m glad to say. Gracious, if he had fallen on a hard iron bank, I don’t know what might have happened. I guess maybe he’d have broken his toothache anyhow. I’m not saying for sure, but maybe.