"Nearly finished you that time!" would have been Goshmeelee's comment, if she had put her mind into words.
The very instant she landed she knew that Dusty Star had not touched her cubs. It was because she recognised in a flash that it was Dusty Star she was attacking, which had made her last fatal spring fall short of its mark. Even then, it was a moment or two before she fully recovered from the effect upon her nerves.
"Don't do it again!" she seemed to say, looking at the boy out of her little glittering eyes.
Dusty Star gave her to understand that far from doing it again, he had never meant to do it once. Bear babies he regarded as absolutely untouchable, beautiful and bulgy though they were. Somehow or other, Goshmeelee believed him. She thrust her great head and shoulders into the hollow, and began to lick the cubs with her enormous tongue. This was not so much for cleaning perhaps, as to comfort herself after her anxiety. The cubs hated being cleaned. One sweep of that great tongue was warranted to spring-clean a cub down all one side from throat to tail. And if the cub objected, a huge paw would deftly turn him over and clean the other side with aggravating thoroughness. It was an added annoyance to the cubs to be washed so late in the day. What they wanted at that hour was food, not washing—extra nourishment, not extra tongue. They squealed and wriggled and gave miniature growls and tried to bite their mother's paw. Their behavior was very wicked indeed. Goshmeelee, being used to their wickedness, calmly went on cleaning.
When she had finished, she backed out of the hollow and sat down to look at Dusty Star; and her look said as plainly as possible, "What are you going to do?"
