And as Teddy would not go down to the lower
lands again to hunt for other kinds of rations, he had to do a lot of
hustling to find enough blue-berries for his healthy young appetite.
Thus it came about that when one day, on an out-of-the-way corner of
the mountain, he stumbled upon a patch of belated berries--large,
plump, lapis-blue, and juicy--he fairly forgot himself in his greedy
excitement. He whimpered, he grunted, he wallowed as he fed. He had
no time to look where he was going. So, all of a sudden, he fell
straight through a thick fringe of blue-berry bushes and went sprawling
and clawing down the face of an almost perpendicular steep.
"The distance of his fall was not far short of thirty feet, and he
brought up with a bump which left him not breath enough to squeal. The
ground was soft, however, with undergrowth and debris, and he had no
bones broken. In a couple of minutes he was busy licking himself all
over to make sure he was undamaged. Reassured on this point, he went
prowling in exploration of the place he had dropped into.
"It was a sort of deep bowl, not more than forty feet across at the
bottom, and with its rocky sides so steep that Teddy Bear did not feel
at all encouraged to climb them.
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