“Well, if there is no (puff) school, I can (puff) hear your (puff) lessons!” You see she puffed because she was all out of breath.
“Oh, no, thank you,” said Neddie quickly, “we’ll have to-day’s lessons to-morrow, so we don’t have to study any now.”
Then he went out to have some fun: and one of the things he did was to watch his uncle Wigwag and Mr. Whitewash, the polar bear gentleman, building a new room onto the cave-house. It was a room made from a big hollow log—not the same one that Neddie and Beckie had been caught in, however, but another one. Mrs. Stubtail wanted her cave-house made larger so Uncle Wigwag suggested adding on a hollow log for a sitting-room.
So that’s what he and Mr. Whitewash were doing, and Neddie helped them by getting in their way every now and then, so they wouldn’t work too fast and get all tired out. Finally Uncle Wigwag said:
“Neddie, I wish you’d go to the store and get me some red paint to color this log green.” And, never thinking it was a joke, off Neddie ran.
Pretty soon after that his mamma wanted him to go to the store to get her a yeast cake, so she could make bread. But, as Neddie was not in sight, Beckie went.
On her way home with the yeast cake in her paws Beckie had to go past a house where some other bears lived. Now these bears were not nice and good. In fact they were bad, and because they were bad, and because the Stubtail family was a family of good bears the bad bears did not like them.
Why, would you believe it? Often those bad bears would take rabbit and squirrel and guinea pig children off to their dens and keep them there for ever and ever so long, just to be mean, you know. But none of the Stubtails, or Mr. Whitewash, or Uncle Wigwag, or Aunt Piffy would do anything like that. Maybe Uncle Wigwag would play a joke, or do something funny, but nothing that was real mean.
And once Mr. Whitewash met a little boy kitten in the woods—Joie Kat I think it was. And Joie was wiggling and squirming and twisting this way and that.
“What’s the matter, Joie?” asked Mr. Whitewash. “Have you the measles?”