"She asked me where I was going with the big cedar bucket."
"And what did you tell her? Now, have a care, Sprigg! Be certain you come square up!" and the bear raised his right fore-foot paw with a warning gesture, awful to see, at the same time showing a double row of teeth, which gleamed like crooked little dirks in the moonshine.
"Oh! Please, sir, don't look at me so with your teeth! I don't like to see you look that way!" and our hero mashed up his face for a cry.
"Oh, you don't like my looks, hey! Hold your brine! You don't like my looks! Aye, and bad boys never do! Never did! So, when bad boys find fault with my looks, I just say: 'If you don't like 'em, you can lump 'em.' That's what I say. 'It's your own fault, if my looks don't please your fancy.' I say that, too. 'You see right, and I'll look right,' that's something more I say. Now, sir, out with it—straight as an arrow, plump as a bullet—what did you tell your mother, as you were climbing the fence?" And the bear again raised his right fore paw, and showed the double row of crooked little dirks.
"Oh! if you please, sir, don't look that way," said our hero, still with his face mashed up for a cry. "Please don't look at me so with your long, sharp teeth! It scares me all but into fits! My name's Sprigg!"
"And who said it wasn't?" growled the bear; and then in a mocking tone added: "Oh, he is trying to dodge me, is he? His name's Sprigg, is it? With this for a fresh start, we'll pass on again to his age, and from that to his pedigree; when he will tell us how his Brandywine uncle took to preaching, because of his wooden legs. Speaking of preachers, up comes his catechism, which, when well said, good little boys get the pat on the head and go out to play. Thus, he was going to lead us by the nose from point to point, till the point in point was clean lost sight of. No, no, my sly cub; you don't bamboozle an old bear so easily as all that. Then out with it at once, and mind how you blink it again! What did you tell your mother?"
Sprigg would have blinked it still, but when he had looked this way and that way at the bear, and down at the moccasins and up at the man in the moon, he saw that to dodge the question longer were but to hide his head, so to speak, under a fence rail, like a goose, or a pig, and fool himself into thinking he was safe. So, with a great gulp, to keep his heart down, which would come heaving up to his throat, he at last cried out:
"Oh, I told her a lie! I told her a lie!" and bursting into tears, he hid his face in his coonskin cap for shame.