"
"How long'll that be?" inquired the Babe dismally. It was hard to sit
still in the hot fir thicket, with that burning, throbbing smart in his
ear and two little points of fierce ache in his leg. Uncle Andy was
far from happy himself; but he felt that the Babe, who had behaved very
well, must have his mind diverted. He fished out a letter from his
pocket, rolled himself, with his heavy pipe tobacco, a cigarette as
thick as his finger, and fell to puffing such huge clouds as would
discourage other bees from prying into the thicket. Then he remarked
irrelevantly but consolingly:
"It isn't always, by any means, that the bees get the best of it this
way. Mostly it's the other way about. _This_ bear was a fool. But
there was Teddy Bear, now, a cub over the foothills of Sugar Loaf
Mountain, and _he_ was _not_ a fool. When he tackled his first bee
tree--and he was nothing but a cub, mind you--he pulled off the affair
in good shape. I wish it had been _these_ bees that he cleaned out."
The Babe was so surprised that he let go of his leg for a moment.
"Why?" he exclaimed, "how could a cub do what a big, strong, grown-up
bear couldn't manage?" He thought with a shudder how unequal _he_
would be to such an undertaking.
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