Children -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction
One evening, when there was a dance and every one was busy down stairs,
Jerry took a walk on the roof, and being sleepy, looked about for a
cosey bed to take a nap in. Two brothers occupied one of these rooms,
and both were Jerry's good friends, especially the younger. Georgie was
fast asleep, as his dancing days had not yet begun, and Charlie was
waltzing away down stairs; so Jerry crept into bed and nestled down
beside his playmate, who was too sleepy to do anything but roll over,
thinking the big brother had come to bed.
By and by Charlie did come up, late and tired, and having forgotten a
lamp, undressed in the moonlight, observing nothing till about to step
into bed; then, finding something rolled up in the clothes, thought it a
joke of the other boys, caught up a racket and began to bang away at the
suspicious bundle. A scene of wild confusion followed, for Jerry growled
and clawed and couldn't get out; Georgie woke, and thinking his
bed-fellow was his brother being abused by some frolicsome mate, held on
to Jerry, defending him bravely, till a rent in the sheet allowed a
shaggy head to appear, so close to his own that the poor child was
painfully reminded of Red Riding Hood's false grandmother. Charlie was
speechless with laughter at this discovery, and while Jerry bounced
about the bed snarling and hugging pillows as he tried to get free,
terrified Georgie rushed down the hall screaming, "The wolf! the wolf!"
till he took refuge in his mother's room.
Out popped night-capped heads, anxious voices cried, "Is it fire?" and
in a moment the house was astir. The panic might have been serious if
Jerry had not come galloping down stairs, hotly pursued by Charlie in
his night-gown, still belaboring the poor beast, and howling, "He was in
my bed! He scared George! I'll thrash him!"
Then the alarmed ladies and gentlemen laughed and grew calm, while the
boys all turned out and hunted Jerry up stairs and down, till he was
captured and ignominiously lugged away to be tied in the barn.
That prank sealed his fate, and he went to join his brother in
captivity. Here they lived for a year, and went to housekeeping in a den
in the bank, with a trough for their food, and a high, knotted pole to
climb on. They had many visitors, and learned a few tricks, but were not
happy bears; for they longed to be free, and the older they grew, the
more they sighed for the great forest where they were born.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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