APRIL 6: An Uninvited Guest
The children were just finishing their lunches which they had been eating in the school yard and were going back to their classes when what should they see but a bear!
“Oh, oh, hurry, scurry, run, run,” they all cried.
“Oh, what an escape!” some of them panted, when they were safe in a nice big barn down the road.
But the bear was having the time of his life.
“Well, well, well,” he growled, “I really don’t understand it at all. Children come to the circus and gaze and gaze at us, and tell their mothers and their daddies how nice they think we are. But how they did run! And I had come to pay them a nice call.
“Sniff-sniff, what is it I smell?” continued the bear. And then he jumped around for joy. “Goodies! Food! Wonderful, wonderful food! How kind of the dear little children. They really expected me to lunch—for they’ve left lots of food—and when I came they didn’t want to make me uncomfortable by watching me eat.
“Ah, now, I have had a fine meal, a luxurious meal, fit for a king—no, fit for a bear!” And the bear rubbed his front paw over his well-filled tummy and again growled delightedly to himself some more, saying over and over again: “Delicious; such a meal!”
But along came the keeper of the animals of the circus and led the bear back to his cage. For a circus was traveling through the country and when they had stopped for a rest this bear had escaped. But what a tale he had to tell when he got back to the circus again!