“Why, Neddie, did your Uncle Wigwag play a trick on you?”
Then Joie or Tommie Kat would want to know:
“Neddie, did you fall out of bed in your sleep, and bump your nose?”
“Neither one! Now you stop!” Neddie would exclaim, and then he’d go in the house. Oh, he was sorry in more ways than one that he had ever meddled with the bees’ nest, even if he did get some honey out of it.
But one afternoon, when Neddie had come in the house because the other animal boys plagued him so, Mrs. Stubtail, the bear mamma, whispered to Beckie, who was Neddie’s sister:
“Beckie, you know Neddie feels pretty badly, don’t you?”
“Yes, mamma, I do. His nose must pain him very much.”
“Indeed it does. Now I’d like to give him a little treat. Suppose you go to the store and get him some ice cream. That will cool off his nose and he will feel better.”
“Of course I’ll go, mamma!” exclaimed Beckie. So she put on her little red cloak and bonnet and off through the woods she went to where Jack Frost kept an ice cream store.
Beckie got a nice big box of ice cream for her brother, and on her way back through the woods the little bear girl saw some lovely bunches of wild grapes hanging on a vine. They were almost the last of the season and soon the grapes would be all gone, for the animals of the woods, and the birds of the air, would eat them.