What do you suppose he was going to do?
To tell the truth, Cuffy himself did not quite know.
When he came to the tree that he had found the day
before he stopped and drank some of the sap once more;
and he tried to imagine how sugar would taste a
hundred times sweeter. Then Cuffy went on
down the mountainside.
At last he spied a little house in a clearing.
From its chimney a stream of smoke rose, and as Cuffy
peeped from behind a tree he saw a man come out and
pick up an armful of wood from the woodpile nearby.
While Cuffy watched, the man carried in several loads.
Soon the smoke began fairly to pour out of the chimney;
and then the man came out once more, picked up an
axe near the woodpile, and started off toward the
other side of the clearing.
Cuffy was trembling with excitement. The wind
blew right in his face and brought to him two odors
that were quite different. One was the man-scent,
which Cuffy did not like at all, and which made his
legs want to run away. The other smell was most
delightfully sweet. And it made his nose want
to go forward.
Which do you think won—Cuffy’s nose
or his legs?... Yes! His nose won!
Pretty soon Cuffy slipped from behind the tree and
scampered as fast as he could run to the door of the
sugar-house—for that was what he had found.
He stuck his head inside and oh, joy! there was no
one there.
Just inside the door stood a tub full of something
brown. One sniff told Cuffy that it was maple-sugar
and he began to gulp great mouthfuls of it. Yes!
his father was right. It certainly was a hundred
times sweeter than the sap.
In the middle of the room was a big pan which gave
off clouds of steam. Cuffy wanted to see it.
And with his mouth full of sugar he walked up to the
pan and looked into it. He saw a golden liquid,
and Cuffy felt that he simply must taste that
too. So he dipped both his front paws right into
the bubbling syrup.
CUFFY MEETS A MAN
And then how Cuffy Bear did roar—just one
second after he had stuck his paws into the steaming
pan. You see—he was so greedy that
he had never once stopped to think that the syrup
was boiling hot.
Now, usually if you pick up anything hot you can drop
it at once. But it is not so with hot maple syrup.
Cuffy’s paws were covered with the sticky brown
stuff. He rubbed them upon his trousers, and he
roared again when he saw what he had done.
Then Cuffy had a happy thought. He would go out
and shove his paws into a snowbank. That would
surely cool them. So out of the sugar-house he
dashed and across the clearing he ran, screaming "Ough!
ough! ough!" at the top of his voice, for the
hot syrup made his paws smart terribly. In his
haste Cuffy did not notice that he was headed in the
direction in which the man had disappeared.
Now it happened that the man who tended the sugar-house
fire had gone only to the edge of the clearing; and
when he heard Cuffy’s shrieks he looked around
in great surprise. He and Cuffy saw each other
at the same time. And like a flash Cuffy turned
and fairly flew the other way.
