"And now the bears are coming—wow! wow! wow!"
And as the great hungry beasts pushed their snouts under the canvas and growled and gnashed their teeth, Lizbeth, little squaw, squealed with terror, and seized you as you lay there helpless in your triple rôle of tent and bears and Indian brave; seized you in the ticklish ribs so that the wigwam came tumbling about your ears, and the Indian brave rolled and shrieked with laughter, and the brute bears fled to their mountain caves.
"Children!"
"W-what?"
"Stop that noise and go right to sleep. Do you hear me?"
Was it not the voice of the mamma bear? Stealthily you crept under the fallen canvas, which had grown smaller, somehow, in the mêlée, so that when you pulled it up to your chin and tucked it in around you, Lizbeth was out in the cold; and when Lizbeth tucked herself in, then you were shivering. But by-and-by you huddled close in the twisted sheets and talked low beneath the edge of the coverlet, so that no one heard you—not even the Gummy-gum, who spent his nights on the back stairs.
"Does the Gummy-gum eat little folks while they're asleep?" asked Lizbeth, with a precautionary snuggle-up.
"No; 'cause the Gummy-gum is afraid of the little black gnomes what live in the pillows."
"Well, if the little black gnomes live in the pillows, why can't you feel them then?"
"'Cause, now, they're so teenty-weenty and so soft."