The Babe smacked his lips.  He was beginning to get pretty hungry himself.

“Well,” continued Uncle Andy, “Teddy Bear chewed and chewed, finally plunging his whole head into the sticky mess—­getting a few stings, of course, but never thinking of them—­till he was just so gorged that he couldn’t hold another morsel.  Then, very slowly and heavily, grunting all the time, he climbed down the bee tree.  He felt that he wanted to go to sleep.  When he reached the bottom he sat up on his haunches to look around for some sort of a snug corner.  His eyelids were swollen with stings, but his little round stomach was swollen with honey, so he didn’t care a cent.  His face was all daubed with honey, and earth, and leaves, and dead bees.  His whole body was a sight.  And his claws were so stuck up with honey and rotten wood and bark that he kept opening and shutting them like a baby who has got a feather stuck to its fingers and doesn’t know what to do with it, But he was too sleepy to bother about his appearance.  He just waddled over to a sort of nook between the roots of the next tree, curled up with his sticky nose between his sticky paws, and was soon snoring.”

“And did he ever get out of that deep hole?” inquired the Babe, always impatient of the abrupt way in which Uncle Andy was wont to end his stories.

“Of course he got out.  He climbed out,” answered Uncle Andy.  “Do you suppose a bear like that could be kept shut up long?  And now I think we might be getting out, too!  I don’t hear any more humming outside, so I reckon the coast’s about clear.”

He peered forth cautiously.

“It’s all right.  Come along,” he said.  “And there’s my pipe at the foot of the rock, just where I dropped it,” he added, in a tone of great satisfaction.  Then, with mud-patched, swollen faces, and crooked but cheerful smiles, the two refugees emerged into the golden light of the afternoon, and stretched themselves.  But, as Uncle Andy surveyed first the Babe and then himself in the unobstructed light, his smile faded.

“I’m afraid Bill’s going to have the laugh on us when we get home!” said he.

CHAPTER VII

THE SNOWHOUSE BABY

There had been a film of glass-clear ice that morning all round the shores of Silverwater.  It had melted as the sun climbed high into the bland October blue; but in the air remained, even at midday, a crispness, a tang, which set the Child’s blood tingling.  He drew the spicy breath of the spruce forests as deep as possible into his little lungs, and outraged the solemn silences with shouts and squeals of sheer ecstasy, which Uncle Andy had not the heart to suppress.  Then, all at once, he remembered what the thrilling air, the gold and scarlet of the trees, the fairy ice films, the whirr of the partridge wings, and the sharp cries of the bluejays all meant.  It meant that soon Uncle Andy would take him back to town,