CHAPTER XX
THE TWINS GET THEIR FIRST BATH
You cannot learn to swim on land,
So waste no time in trying.
And if you keep from getting wet
You’ll never need a drying.
Mother Bear.
Wonderful days were these for the twins, Boxer and Woof-Woof. Every day there was something new to see or hear or taste or smell or feel. And then there had to be tucked away in each funny little head where it could not be forgotten the memory of exactly how each of these new things looked or sounded or tasted or smelled or felt. Mother Bear was very particular about this. So, though the twins didn’t know it, they were really going to school all the time that they thought they were simply having good times and wonderful adventures.
One day Mother Bear led them over to the pond of Paddy the Beaver. How the cubs did stare when they got their first glimpse of that pond. The Laughing Brook was the only water they were acquainted with, and in that part of the Green Forest it was narrow and the pools were very small. They had not supposed there was so much water in all the Great World as now lay before them in the pond of Paddy the Beaver.