“Oh, see it snow!” exclaimed Neddie Stubtail, the little boy bear, as he looked out of the window of the cave-house. “Look, Beckie!” “I can’t, Neddie, dear,” said the little girl bear. “I am making a new dress for my wax doll, Clarabelle Sarahjane Peartree, and if I look up I may drop a stitch or two.”
“Oh, if you drop them I’ll pick them up,” said Neddie most politely.
Beckie laughed.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “When you are sewing and drop a stitch it means you let it slip out of the cloth. It doesn’t drop on the floor.”
“I don’t understand,” said Neddie; “I admit that. But anyhow it’s snowing, and I’m going out and have some fun.”
“I will come, too, as soon as I get this doll’s dress done,” answered Beckie. “But I have to put some frills down the middle and some plaits 232up the side. Then around one edge there is to go some lace, and on the other some insertion and——”
“That’s enough,” cried Neddie. “I give up! I’m going out and make a snowball, and there won’t be any lace on it, nor any tucks, either.”
“Oh, you boys!” said Beckie with a sigh, as she threaded her needle with a fine piece of corn silk that she was using to sew her doll’s dress.
So Neddie went out to play in the snow, and while he was hopping about, making snowballs and throwing them up in the air to watch them come down, and now and then rolling over and over in the snow to make himself look white like Mr. Whitewash, the polar bear—while Neddie was doing this, his sister Beckie was sewing her doll’s dress.
Pretty soon she had it nearly finished, so she laid it aside, and put her needle safely away where Uncle Wigwag or Aunt Piffy, the fat old lady bear, would not sit on it by mistake, and then Beckie went out to play with her brother Neddie.
The two bear children had lots of fun in the snow, and in a little while Neddie said:
“Let’s go over in the woods, Beckie. Maybe we’ll find a lemon pie or a pollylop, or something like that.”
233“What’s a pollylop?” asked Beckie, as she caught a snowflake on the end of her tongue, just as the clown in the circus catches a little piggie by his tail. “I never heard of a pollylop, Neddie.”
“Why,” said the little bear boy, “a pollylop is just like a lollypop only different. You see a lollypop is a stick with a lump of candy on one end.”
“Oh, yes, I know that,” answered Beckie.
“And a pollylop,” went on Neddie, “is a lump of candy, with a stick on one end.”
“Oh, I see what you mean!” exclaimed Beckie with a laugh. “One is upside down and the other——”
“The other is downside up,” finished her brother, as he turned a peppersault into a bank of snow, and came out on the other side with a feather sticking in his ear.
“Oh, look at that!” exclaimed Beckie. “Where did you get that feather, Neddie?”
“Why, I don’t know,” he answered, scratching his left paw with his right ear. “I guess it must have come out of the snowbank.”
“Feathers don’t grow in snowbanks, Neddie,” spoke Beckie.
“No more they do,” he answered, taking this 234one from his ear and looking at it. “I guess this feather must be off a chicken or a turkey, Beckie.”
“No, it isn’t large enough for a chicken’s or a turkey’s feather,” said Beckie. “It must be from a little bird. But what would a bird be doing in a snowbank?”
And just then the two little bear children heard a voice crying:
“Oh, dear! How cold I am! Oh, I am almost frozen!”
“Oh, the poor thing!” exclaimed Beckie. “That’s a poor little birdie in the snowbank, Neddie. You must get him out and we’ll warm him.”
“How?” asked the little bear boy. “How can you warm him?”
“Oh, I’ll find a way,” said Beckie.
“All right. Then I’ll dive into th............