Melancholy though I was, I was about to pass her in a frigid, dignified manner, and go up to my room, but the stony-hearted manager of the hotel interfered. “Here, you blamed old scavenger,” he cried, “this isn’t a dump heap. Go and bury your clothes! Why you look like a guy, sir!”
“Is not this the Geyser House?” I asked. The joke, which might have been sold to a funny paper for three dollars, was utterly lost upon him. He repeated his impolite suggestion about my clothes and said he would send a boy to me with more.
I had no choice but to obey. In my changed raiment I was allowed to go to my room, where a bath, clean linen, and a shave speedily set me right again. I had left my clothes in the woods for future expeditions of the same sort.
Elaborating my notes and developing my plates took me the better part of a week, and all the time, there was a decided coolness between Mrs. Kirsten and myself. Not so with Miranda. She loved me, if her mother did not, and pleaded with me at every meal to take her with me when I went to see the “pitty Bears.”
The next morning I was sitting on one corner of the veranda and Mrs. Kirsten on the other, with Miranda’s shoes and stockings in her lap. I knew where the child had gone and surmised that a tempest was raging in the mother’s heart, but she was too proud to turn to me for even a look of sympathy.
Presently Miranda came toward us at the top of her speed, with a Bear in full pursuit. Man though I was, my heart stood still with fear. I had no weapon—I was utterly helpless—and Mrs. Kirsten, literally paralysed with horror, stood like a statue.
The Bear was gaining at every step. Go it, Miranda! On, for Heaven’s sake on! Heed not the thorns that pierce thy tender feet, but run, Miranda, run!
With an inarticulate moan, Mrs. Kirsten flew down the steps, her arms outstretched, and I followed, willing to sacrifice my own life, if need be, to save the child of the woman I loved. But we were too late. Snoof—for it was she—felled Miranda to the ground with one blow, turned her limp body over, face upward, and took something out of her hand, throwing it aside with an angry sniff.
In a twinkling, Miranda was on her feet, violently chastising the Bear with her chubby hands. “Naughty, bad Snoofie!” she screamed. “Take Miwanda’s bewwies!”
Snoof cast a glance of peculiar intelligence at me, winked suggestively, then ambled off into the forest to rejoin her Cub, who was calling her plaintively.