“Oh, if he’s dancing, that’s another matter,” said Rose.
Kate was most desirous to see a bear. She had read of the beast in Æsop’s Fables--seen pictures of Bruin as he smelt about the traveller who feigned himself dead whilst his fellow escaped up a tree; also as he tore himself with his claws after having overset the hives and was attacked by the bees. She had formed in her own mind an idea of the beast as very big, and as very stupid.
A considerable throng surrounded the area in which the bear was being exhibited, but Jan and Noah were broad-shouldered, and not scrupulous about forcing a way where they desired to pass, and of thrusting into the background others less broad and muscular. Following close after the two young men, dragged along by them, were Rose and Kate, and they were speedily in the inner ring, in full view of Bruin and his master, an Italian, who held him by a chain. The bear was muzzled, and had a collar to which the chain was attached. A woman, in dirty Neapolitan costume, played a hurdy-gurdy and solicited contributions.
The bear was made to stand on his hind legs, raise one foot, then the other, in clumsy imitation of a dance, and then to take a stick and go through certain evolutions which a lively imagination might figure as gun practice.
“De bear--he beg pretty--von penny, shentlemensh!”
Bruin, instructed by a jerk of the chain and a rap, put his front paws together. Then, tired of his upright attitude, he went down on all-fours.
The brute was not equal to Kate’s anticipations, certainly not as massive and shaggy as pictured by Bewick in his Æsop’s Fables. About the neck it was rubbed by the collar, and the hair was gone. Its fur over the body was patchy and dirty. The beast seemed to be without energy and to be out of health. Its movements were ungainly, its humour surly.
Kate soon tired of observing the creature, and would have withdrawn from the ring had she been able; but the crowd was compact behind, and she was wedged into her place.
The passive disposition of Bruin was all at once changed by the appearance of a dog that had passed between the legs of the spectators, and which entered the ring and flew at the bear with barks and snaps.
“De dogue! Take de dogue away!” shouted the Italian. “De bear no like dogue.”