at his own ears and face as well as at the air, now thick with his assailants.  The terrific hum they made somewhat daunted him.  For a few seconds he stood his ground, battling frantically.  Then, with an agility that you would never have dreamed his chubby form to be capable of, he went swinging down from branch to branch, whining and coughing and spluttering and squealing all the way.  From the lowest branch he slid down the trunk, his claws tearing the bark and just clinging enough to break his fall.

“Reaching the ground, he began to roll himself over and over in the dry leaves and twigs till he had crushed out all the bees that clung in his fur.”

“But why didn’t the rest of the bees follow him?  They followed this other bear to-day!” protested the Babe feelingly.

“Well, they didn’t!” returned Uncle Andy quite shortly, with his customary objection to being interrupted.  Then he thought better of it, and added amiably:  “That’s a sensible question—­a very natural question; and I’ll give you the answer to it in half a minute.  I’ve got to tell you my yarn in my own way, you know—­you ought to know it by this time—­but you’ll see presently just why the bees acted so differently in the two cases.

“Well, as soon as Teddy Bear had got rid of his assailants he clawed down through the leaves and twigs and moss—­like I did just now, you remember, till he came to the damp, cool earth.  Ah, how he dug his smarting muzzle into it, and rooted in it, and rubbed it into his ears and on his eyelids! till pretty soon—­for the bee stings do not poison a bear’s blood as strongly as they poison us—­he began to feel much easier.  As for the rest of his body—­well, those stings didn’t amount to much, you know, because his fur and his hide were both so thick.

“At last he sat up on his haunches and looked around.  You should have seen him!”

“I’m glad I wasn’t there, Uncle Andy,” said the Babe, earnestly shaking his head.  But Uncle Andy paid no attention to the remark.

“His muddy paws drooped over his breast, and his face was all stuck over with leaves and moss and mud—­”

“We must look funny, too,” suggested the Babe, staring hard at the black mud poultice under his uncle’s swollen eye.  But his uncle refused to be diverted.

“And his glossy fur was in a state of which his mother would have strongly disapproved.  But his twinkling little eyes burned with wrath and determination.  He sniffed again that honey smell.  He stared up at the bee tree, and noted that the opening was much larger than it had been before his visit.  A big crack extended from it for nearly two feet down the trunk.  Moreover, there did not seem to be so many bees buzzing about the hole.”

The Babe’s eyes grew so round with inquiry at this point that Uncle Andy felt bound to explain.