The man ran after him for a few steps. But he
soon saw that he could never catch Cuffy. So
he stood still and watched the little bear bob into
the woods and vanish.
Poor Cuffy’s heart was beating as if it would
burst. He was so frightened that he forgot all
about his burned paws and he ran and ran and ran up
the steep mountainside. He did not mind the climb;
he was used to that. But to his great alarm the
snow clung to his sticky paws until each was just
a great, round lump. They looked like the hands
of a snow-man.
Cuffy found it very hard to run with his paws like
that. But he kept on and on, until at last he
came in sight of his father’s house. Then
he stopped and sat down, right behind a knoll, where
his mother could not see him. He was very tired.
And though he was no longer afraid that the man would
catch him, he began to be afraid of something else....
A punishing? No—no! He had not
thought of that. Cuffy was afraid that he could
never get rid of those big heavy lumps. He was
afraid his paws would always be covered with those
hard balls of snow. You must remember that he
was a very young little bear.
Well! After he had got his breath again Cuffy
began to nibble at his snow mittens. And little
by little—to his delight—he removed
them. And still he kept on nibbling at his paws,
and—yes! he actually put them right inside
his mouth and sucked them. He forgot all about
his manners, for underneath the snow he found
the most beautiful, waxy maple-sugar you can imagine.
Each paw was just one big lollypop! And though
his burns still hurt him, Cuffy did not care very much.
For those lollypops were two hundred times
sweeter than anything he had ever tasted in all his
life!
THE ICE GOES OUT OF THE RIVER
Farmer Green had taken his sap-buckets off the maple
trees and that meant the spring was fast going.
At least, that was what Mr. Bear said. And Cuffy
noticed that every day there was a little less snow
than there had been the day before.
“The ice will soon go out,” Mr. Bear said
to Cuffy’s mother at breakfast one morning,
“and then when I cross Pleasant Valley I shall
have to swim the river.”
Cuffy knew that his father meant Swift River.
In summer Cuffy could look down from Blue Mountain
and see the stream as it flashed through the valley.
“Will the ice go out of the river to-day?”
Cuffy asked.
“Well, now—” Mr. Bear said,
“it might. And then again, it might not.”
Mr. Bear never said a thing was so unless he
was sure of it.
Now, Cuffy thought it would be great fun to go down
into the valley and find out for himself if the ice
really did go out. He had an idea that it caused
a terrific splitting and crashing and thundering noise
and he thought that perhaps some fish would be tossed
up on the bank and then he would have a good lunch.
