“What Poles? Are they clothes-poles?” asked Joel persistently. “Say, Polly; and did the bear help to hang out the clothes to dry?”
“No, no—don’t ask so many questions, Joe; I never shall get through if you do. This bear came from the North Pole, where it is dreadfully cold. And he loved mince-pie, oh, terribly! And he began, ‘Now, fellow bears and bearesses, and wolves, and—and—wolveresses.’”
“And crocodiles,” said Joel; “don’t forget them.”
“No, I won’t. ‘And crocodiles and croco—crocodilesses and all the rest of you,’ because, you see, he couldn’t mention them all by name, for he wouldn’t have had time for his speech if he had; ‘we must get some of that boy’s mince-pie. It isn’t fair for him to have so much, and we to have none. Now, I have a plan; and if you will all do just as I say, I will get you some mince-pie.’ So they all—the different beasts and beastesses—crowded around the white polar bear, and he spoke out his plan.
“‘You know the company is coming to the big man’s house’—the beasts always called Adolphus’s house by that name—‘and we shall be sent for as usual. Now, when we get there, let us march into the hall as if we were going to perform. But instead of that I shall go right straight up in front of the big man and that dreadful mince-pie boy, and shall roar at them: ‘I will eat off your head and scrunch your bones, unless you give me some mince-pie this minute!’”
Polly roared it out so loud, and looked so very dreadful, that Phronsie came running in from the bedroom where she had been putting on her red-topped shoes which Mamsie let her do sometimes, but not step in them for fear of hurting them. One shoe was half off, and every button of the other was in the wrong button-hole. [“O Polly!” she cried scuttling over to her]; “what was that dreadful noise?”
[“O Polly!” she cried scuttling over to her.]
“Now you see, Joel,” cried Polly, throwing down her work, and gathering up Phronsie into her lap, “I’ve scared her most to death. ’Tisn’t anything, Phronsie pet, but some bears and things Joel wanted me to tell of”—as Phronsie hid her yellow head on Polly’s arm.
“Polly made that noise with her own mouth,” said Joel; “and ’twas splendid, Phron. Make it again, Polly, do.”