“‘S—sh!’ said Cassiopeia; and ‘You wait,’ said Hercules.
“‘So the other bears said: “All right. You tell us what it is.” And the funny bear told ’em what to do, and they all went to work, and they gnawed out the inside of the meteors. And they were bigger than the bears’ heads—so their heads went inside; and they gnawed ’em out until there wasn’t anything left but the thin shell; and they gnawed holes through that in places, besides—just the way the funny bear told ’em to. And it was a cloudy night, and those bears all worked like sixty, and before morning they had just a thousand meteors all gnawed out.
“‘The next night began by being cloudy too; but about two hours after dark, it all cleared off. The clouds rolled up from one side, all together, like a curtain in front of a tableau. And the first man that looked up at the sky fell right down in a fit, so everybody around had to attend to him. But when he began to come out of it, the rest of them looked up—just to see what the weather was; and every one of ’em yelled right out!’
“Hercules stopped and looked around at his audience. They were listening so breathlessly they couldn’t even ask questions, and he must have been proud of his success. He paused to enjoy it, until Cassiopeia said, ‘Oh, go on!’
“‘What do you suppose made ’em?’ he asked, looking at Little Bear,—‘made ’em yell, I mean. In that sky, there ought to have been just one thousand stars, spread around equally; instead of that, there were one thousand Chinamen’s heads, grinnin’ at ’em, over each other’s shoulders, all on one half of the sky.’ (‘Oh!’ gasped the Star People.) ‘Those horrible bears had popped one star inside of each of those gnawed-out meteors, and arranged ’em like that.’”
(“Like the heads on the Chinese plates,” whispered Phyllisy, and the Princess twinkled at her with her eyes.)
“‘Made jack-o’ lanterns of them,’ said Cepheus.
“‘Yes,’said Hercules. ‘One thousand jack-o’lanterns, because that funny bear said it would be a joke.’
“‘I should think it was,’ said Orion.
“‘Well, it wasn’t,’ said Hercules. ‘At least, it was the poorest joke those bears ever tried. It did for them! Of course, people couldn’t stand such goings on with the stars. So they said: “Those bears have got to be cleared out; and we’ll have some Star People to take care of our sky.” So they picked out some people they knew were good at huntin’ wild animals and weren’t afraid; and Orion and Perseus and I—and some more of us—came first; and we just cleared out those horrible bears that weren’t fit to be here, and made this the right kind of a Starland for us all to live in.’