“He is indeed a thoughtless boy,” said his father, “but I hope a grateful one; you have most probably saved his life!”

“Uncle knows I am grateful, I’m sure,” said Tom, “I needn’t tell him!”

“It’s a fine beast, and fat as butter,” remarked Uncle John, feeling its sides as he spoke, “yet he must have been hungry, fond as a bear is of pork, to venture so near a house by daylight!”

“What a warm fur!” observed Mr. Lee, “just feel how thick the hair is!”

“But what can we do with such a mountain of flesh and fat?” asked Tom.  “We can’t eat it, and we’ve no dogs.”

“O, we’ll eat it fast enough!” replied his uncle; “a bear ham is a delicacy, I assure you.”

“I think we may as well set about skinning and cutting it up for curing at once, as we have little to do to-day.  What say you, John?”

“Yes, we had better; but we must do the business here, for the skin would be quite spoiled were we to attempt to drag the carcase into the yard, though it would be more convenient to have it there.  We can take the hams and fur, and leave the rest.”

“What a busy day this has been,” said Tom, that evening, when he and his sister had finished the reading and writing lessons their father gave them every night; “what with helping to catch the bear, and then to skin and cut him up, and dinner and tea, and reading and writing, I’ve not had a spare moment.”

“As to helping to catch the bear,” said his father, laughing, “you may leave that out of the catalogue of your occupations.”

“Not at all, father; for, if I hadn’t gone to see what was the matter, he would have walked off with the pig, and no one the wiser.”

“Oh, certainly, Tom helped!” cried his uncle; “and his mother helped, too, for, you remember, she wondered what was the matter in the hog-pen!”

“I don’t mind your fun, uncle,” said Tom; “I shall shoot a bear myself some day.”

“I’m glad that, if the poor bear was to come, it came to-day rather than to-morrow, for to-morrow will be Sunday,” remarked Annie; “the week has seemed so short to me!”

“So it has to me,” said her brother; “the weeks seem to fly fast.”

“Because you are always occupied,” observed Mr. Lee; “time is long and tedious only with the idle.  What a blessing work is; it adds in every way to the happiness of life!—­it is good for the mind, and good for the body!”

“I used to think it very disagreeable, I remember!”

“You have grown wiser as well as older, Tom, during the past year,” said his mother.

“If I only do so every year, mother!”

“If you do, Tom, you will indeed be a happy man, for the ways of wisdom are ways of pleasantness;—­but it must be time for your usual wash.”

“Aye, so it is!  I believe I like the Saturday night wash almost as well as the Sunday rest.  One seems to feel better, as well as cleaner, after it!”