[XIX]
BABY FOX AND MRS. BEAR
There is a great river which comes rushing through the mountains, where the cliffs are dark with trees, and the heavy snows are slow to melt, even when spring has made the valleys green and warm. Here, on a cliff, snug and warm beneath the roots of a great tree, lived Mrs. Bear and her family of cubs. Three baby bears there were; and in their fine black coats with dark brown edges they were very handsome.
For their playmate, however, there was a little stranger. Just a funny little fox, whose fur was the color of a flame of fire. He was a rare little fox, being of such a lovely color. Had the hunters in the valley dreamed that he was living on the mountain above their very farms, they would never have rested until they got him, for his skin would bring a fortune in the world of men and money.
But of this the little fox knew nothing, for ever since the day that good Mrs. Bear had found him, lost and weak and hungry, where he had fallen down to sleep in the snow, he had led the happiest of lives with the little baby bears. They could not run as fast as he could, nor could they bark as prettily, but they were wonderful at turning somersaults, and at playing leap-frog, and they were more than generous to him. They gave him the best place at dinner, and when they all went to sleep, they cuddled him up between them, while the big Mrs. Bear slept with her nose to the door. Blow the wind as it might, they were all as warm as toast.
But one fine day in early summer Mrs. Bear broke the news to her family that the foxes, one and all, were looking for their child. One way or another, the news had gone down from the mountain to the high pastures and fields at the edge of the farms, and it was joy to the heart of the fox mother, to learn that her beautiful Fireflame was alive.
Of course he must go back. And by an arrangement most agreeable to Mrs. Bear, she was to venture with her adopted baby as far as the blackberry patches and the great maple groves at the foot of the mountain. The foxes would meet her, and with sweet little Fireflame safe in the bosom of his family, all would be well.
Just as it was planned, the excursion was made; but all the way down the mountain Mrs. Bear kept finding more and more berries to eat.
"Here I must stop on my way back," she would say.
"And here is another wonderful patch! Such blueberries I have never seen in my whole life."