CHAPTER XXI
THE TWINS ARE STILL PUZZLED
To have true faith is to believe
E’en when appearances deceive.
Mother Bear.
It wouldn’t be quite truthful to say that the twins enjoyed that first bath and swim. They didn’t. In the first place, they had gone in all over without the least intention of doing so. In fact, they had tumbled in. This had frightened them. They had opened their mouths to yell and had swallowed more water than was at all pleasant. Some of it had gone down the wrong way, and this had choked them. No, the twins didn’t enjoy that first bath and swim at all.
They climbed out on the dam of Paddy the Beaver and shook themselves, making the water fly from their coats in a shower. Mother Bear had started back at the sound of the splashes they had made when they fell in, but seeing them safe, she grinned and went on about her own affairs.
“This has saved me some trouble,” muttered she. “I probably would have had hard work to get them into the water without throwing them in. Now they will not be afraid of it. An accident sometimes proves a blessing.”
Meanwhile the twins had shaken themselves as nearly dry as they could and were now sitting down side by side, gravely staring at the water. There was something very mysterious about that water. They felt that somehow it had played them a trick; that it was its fault that they had fallen in.
Suddenly Boxer remembered the two little stranger Bears. What had become of them? In the excitement he had forgotten all about them. He remembered that it was while striking at one of them he had fallen in. That little Bear had struck at him at the same time. Boxer couldn’t recall being hit or striking anything but that water. Then he had tumbled in.
But had he tumbled in? Hadn’t he been pulled in? Hadn’t that other little Bear grabbed him and pulled him in? The instant that idea popped into his head, Boxer was sure that that was how it all came about. He glared as much as such a little Bear could glare all around in search of that other little Bear, but no other little Bear but his sister Woof-Woof was to be seen. She was solemnly gazing at the water.