FullReads

Herrick gave a shout of joy and triumph.”What did I tell you!” he called.”See how he loves it! See how happy he is.”

“Not at all,” protested Kelly.”He thought you gave him the sign to ‘roll over.’ Tell him to ‘play dead,’ and he’ll do that.” ” Tell allthe bears to ‘play dead,'” begged Jackson, “until I’m back in the billiard-room.”

Flushed with happiness, Herrick tossed Ikey’s cage out of the wagon, and opened the door of the one that held Bruno and Clara. On their part, there was a moment of doubt. As though suspecting a trap, they moved to the edge of the cage, and gazed critically at the screen of trees and tangled vines that rose before them.

“They think it’s a new backdrop,” explained Kelly.

But the delight with which Ikey was enjoying his bath in the autumn leaves was not lost upon his parents. Slowly and clumsily they dropped to the ground. As though they expected to be recalled, each turned to look at the group of people who had now run to peer through the wire meshes of the fence. But, as no one spoke and no one signalled, the three bears, in single file, started toward the edge of the forest. They had of cleared space to cover only a little distance, and at each step, as though fearful they would be stopped and punished, one or the other turned his head. But no one halted them. With quickening footsteps the bears, now almost at a gallop, plunged forward. The next instant they were lost to sight, and only the crackling of the underbrush told that they had come into their own.

Herrick dropped to the ground and locked himself inside the preserve.

“I’m going after them,” he called, “to see what they’ll do.”

There was a frantic chorus of entreaties.

“Don’t be an ass!” begged Jackson.”They’ll eat you.” Herrick waved his hand reassuringly.

“They won’t even see me,” he explained.”I can find my way about this place better than they can. And I’ll keep to windward of them, and watch them. Go to the house,” he commanded.”I’ll be with you in an hour, and report.”

It was with real relief that, on assembling for dinner, the house party found Herrick, in high spirits, with the usual number of limbs, and awaiting them. The experiment had proved a great success. He told how, unheeded by the bears, he had, without difficulty, followed in their tracks. For an hour he had watched them. No happy school-children, let loose at recess, could have embraced their freedom with more obvious delight. They drank from the running streams, for honey they explored the hollow tree-trunks, they sharpened their claws on moss-grown rocks, and among the fallen oak leaves scratched violently for acorns. So satisfied was Herrick with what he had seen, with the success of his experiment, and so genuine and unselfish was he in the thought of the happiness he had brought to the beasts of the forests, that for him no dinner ever passed more pleasantly. Miss Waring, who sat next to her host, thought she had seldom met a man with so kind and simple a nature. She rather resented the fact, and she was inwardly indignant that so much right feeling and affection could be wasted on farmyard fowls, and four-footed animals. She felt sure that some nice girl, seated at the other end of the table, smiling through the light of the wax candles upon Herrick, would soon make him forget his love of “Nature and Nature’s children.” She even saw herself there, and this may have made her exhibit more interest in Herrick’s experiment than she really felt. In any event, Herrick found her most sympathetic’ and when dinner was over carried her off to a corner of the terrace. It was a warm night in early October, and the great woods of the game preserve that stretched below them were lit with a full moon.