That twisting thunder-storm last July was doubtless to blame for the
charred and crumbling appearance of the side the door was on. There was
nothing to keep him from walking straight inside.
There were a number of iron kettles in the shack, and into each of these
Twinkly sniffed with interest. But they were clean and empty. Where,
then, did that sugary odor come from? Ah, over in one corner, where it
had fallen, lay a wooden cask. This, Twinkly’s wriggling nose told him,
was the place. Inside this cask was the delicious something that made
his mouth water so. Successive wettings, as rain and wind had pummeled
through the side of the shack, had wet the contents till they were
oozing liquidly through the cracks.
Twinkly Eyes put out his tongue and licked the sides, then set joyously
to work with his curved claws to tear an opening into the thing.
So suddenly that it struck him square in the face, the half of one stave
came off. Then he broke off another, and after that a third. The keg had
not been full, and the part he had torn an opening into was the empty
part. But Twinkly didn’t care. He simply thrust his head in and licked,
and licked, and licked at the sugary cake.
He could just reach it with the red tip of that greedy tongue. There was
nothing he could reach with his jaws. And presently he began to twist
and wiggle in the effort to get more.
By dint of much shoving he finally got his head clear inside the cask.
Then he was happy. My, how that bear enjoyed the next half-hour! By
stretching his neck farther and farther through the narrow opening he
could just scrape the delicious contents with his teeth.
His jaws dripped with the combined delights of an-tic-i-pa-tion and
real-i-za-tion. That the feast would continue till the last crumb was
gone he had no doubt whatever. Not Twinkly Eyes!
By and by, however, stretch as he might, he could thrust his head no
farther, and he could reach no more. Then what a time there was, as the
little Bear tried to pull himself out of the barrel.
And as he jerked and banged about in growing alarm, his heels sent
everything in the cabin spinning about his shanks.
When finally his head came free quite suddenly, he sat down with such
violence that he went sliding across the floor with the huge iron kettle
over-turned on top of him. And, of course, being unable to see what it
was that had imprisoned him, he struck out still more viciously.
LVII
A FEAST AND A FAST
Twinkly Eyes was a most un-com-fort-able bear.
True, he had freed his head from the sugar cask. But in his blind fury
at the thing that held his head imprisoned he had thrashed about till
all the furniture in the camp had been sent spinning about his heels.
Then at last the huge iron kettle had landed squarely on top of him!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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