Sure enough an undeniable bear sprang out on us as we dropped into the road; then ensued shrieks, growlings, revolver-shots, and unrecorded heroisms, till Edward condescended at last to roll over and die, bulking large and grim, an unmitigated grizzly. It was an understood thing, that whoever took upon himself to be a bear must eventually die, sooner or later, even if he were the eldest born; else, life would have been all strife and carnage, and the Age of Acorns have displaced our hard-won civilisation. This little affair concluded with satisfaction to all parties concerned, we rambled along the road, picking up the defaulting Harold by the way, muffinless now and in his right and social mind.
‘What would you do?’ asked Charlotte presently—the book of the moment always dominating her thoughts until it was sucked dry and cast aside,—‘What would you do if you saw two lions in the road, one on each side, and you didn’t know if they was loose or if they was chained up?’
‘Do?’ shouted Edward valiantly, ‘I should—I should—I should—’ His boastful accents died away into a mumble: ‘Dunno what I should do.’
‘Shouldn’t do anything,’ I observed after consideration; and, really, it would be difficult to arrive at a wiser conclusion.
‘If it came to doing,’ remarked Harold reflectively, ‘the lions would do all the doing there was to do, wouldn’t they?’
‘But if they was good lions,’ rejoined Charlotte, ‘they would do as they would be done by.’
‘Ah, but how are you to know a good lion from a bad one?’ said Edward. ‘The books don’t tell you at all, and the lions ain’t marked any different.’
‘Why, there aren’t any good lions,’ said Harold hastily.
‘O yes, there are, heaps and heaps,’ contradicted Edward. ‘Nearly all the lions in the story-books are good lions. There was Androcles’ lion, and St. Jerome’s lion, and—and—and the Lion and the Unicorn——’
‘He beat the Unicorn,’ observed Harold dubiously, ‘all round the town.’