I, of course, was the principal object of general attention.  They wanted to know what I really thought of Billy Marshall as a scholar.  They wanted to know if I would have some more.  They wanted to know if I had had any previous experience with bears.  The father asked which I thought it would be easier to manage, a boy or a bear.  The boy Percy wanted to know how I placed my feet when I stood up in front of a runaway horse.  Others asked if I intended to go back to my school at Walford, and how I liked the village, and if I were president of the literary society there, which Mrs. Larramie thought I ought to be, on account of my scholastic position.

[Illustration:  “‘Would it be easier to manage A boy or A bear?’”]

But before the meal was over the bear had come to be the absorbing subject of conversation.  I was asked my plans about him, and they were all disapproved.

“It would be of no use to take him to the Cheltenham,” said Walter, the oldest son.  “They couldn’t keep him there.  They have too many horses—­a livery-stable.  They wouldn’t let you come on the place with him.”

“Of course not,” said Mr. Larramie.  “And, besides, why should you take him there?  It would be a poor place anyway.  They wouldn’t keep him until his owner turned up.  They wouldn’t have anything to do with him.  What you want to do is to bring your bear here.  We have a hay-barn out in the fields.  He could sleep in the hay, and we could give him a long chain so that he could have a nice range.”

The younger members of the family were delighted with this suggestion.  Nothing would please them better than to have a bear on the place.  Each one of them was ready to take entire charge of it, and Percy declared that he would go into the woods and hunt for wild-bee honey with which to feed it.  Even Mrs. Larramie assured me that if a bear were well chained, at a suitable distance, she would have no fears whatever of it.

I accepted the proposition, for I was glad to get rid of the animal in a way which would please so many people, and after dinner was over, and I had smoked a cigar with my host and his son Walter, I said that it was time for me to go and get the bear.

“But you won’t go by the main road,” said Mr. Larramie.  “That makes a great curve below here to avoid a hill.  If I understood you properly, you left the bear not far from a small house inhabited by three women?”

“They’re the McKenna sisters,” added Walter.

“Yes,” said the father, “and their house is not more than two miles from here by a field road.  I will go with you.”

I exclaimed that I would not put him to so much trouble, but my words were useless.  The Walter son declared that he would go also, that he would like the walk; the Percy son declared he was going if anybody went; and Genevieve, the girl with the yellow plait, said that she wished she were a boy so that she could go too, and she wished she could go anyway, boy or no boy, and as her father said that there was no earthly reason why she should not go, she ran for her hat.