"Keep still, and he won't hurt ye," he said, turning his quid. "That's one of his tricks. Throw out what you've got, and he'll leave ye."
The dandy made haste to help bruin to the last of the seed-cakes, and escaped without injury, but in a ridiculous plight,–his hat smashed, his necktie and linen rumpled, and his watch dangling; but his fright was the most laughable part of all.
The one-eyed hostler made a motion to the beast, who immediately climbed the pole, and looked at us from the cross-piece at the top.
"A bear," said the one-eyed hostler, turning his quid again, "is the best-hearted, knowin'est critter that goes on all-fours. I'm speakin' of our native black bear, you understand. The brown bear aint half so respectable, and the grizzly is one of the ugliest brutes in creation. Come down here, Pomp!"
Pomp slipped down the pole and advanced towards the one-eyed hostler, walking on his hind legs and rattling his chain.
"Playful as a kitten!" said the one-eyed hostler, fondly. "I'll show ye."
He took a wooden bar from a clothes-horse near by, and made a lunge with it at Pomp's breast.
No pugilist or fencing-master could have parried a blow more neatly. Then the one-eyed hostler began to thrust and strike with the bar as if in downright earnest.
"Rather savage play," I remarked. And a friend by my side, who never misses a chance to make a pun, added,—
"Yes, a decided act of bar-bear-ity."