FullReads

Though it was cold outside of Mr. Mugg’s store, the Plush Bear did not feel it. In the first place, he had on his own warm coat, which was almost like fur. Then he was wrapped in paper, and he was in a box, and he was inside the nice automobile. So he was even more comfortable than he had been at the North Pole, and ever so much more cozy than when he was in the igloo of Ski, the Eskimo boy.

“Look, Nettie! Look what I have!” cried Arthur, the fat boy, as he ran into the house as soon as the auto stopped. “I have a Bear that growls!”

Nettie, his little sister, who was running to meet her brother, carrying in her arms a Rag Doll, stopped when Arthur began to open the bundle he had carried from Mr. Mugg’s store.

“I don’t like growly bears!” she exclaimed.

“Oh, this bear is nice! He’s a Plush Bear,” Arthur said. “He wobbles his head and he jiggles his paws, and he growls, but it’s only a make-believe growl. Look at my new Bear, Nettie!”

Arthur quickly took the wrappings from the Plush Bear and wound up the spring as Mr. Mugg had shown him. Then, when the Bear was set down on the floor, the toy began to wave his paws, to shake his head from side to side, and from his red mouth came several growls.

“Oh! Oh!” exclaimed Nettie, who had knelt down beside her brother to look at the Bear. “I don’t like him when he growls!”

“Oh, he won’t hurt you, Nettie!” laughed the fat boy Arthur. “See, he’s waving his paw to you, and he only growls like your rubber doll squeaks. My Plush Bear is nice, Nettie.”

And when the little girl found that the Bear did no harm, but only growled in a make-believe, jolly fashion, she decided to make friends with him. She sat down on the floor close beside him, and when the clockwork inside the toy had run down, and the Bear was still, Nettie took him up in her arms and loved him.

“Isn’t he nice?” asked Arthur.

“Yes, pretty nice,” agreed Nettie. “But he isn’t as nice as my Rag Doll.”

“Well, girls like dolls and boys like Plush Bears. That’s the best way, I guess,” said Arthur.

Then he and his sister played some more with the Plush Bear, winding him up, listening to his pretended growls, and watching him wave his paws and shake his head.

That night after the children had gone to bed and the Plush Bear was in the closet of the playroom with the Rag Doll, the Bear leaned over and whispered to the Doll:

“What sort of place is it here?”

“Oh, very nice!” the Rag Doll answered. “Two better children than Nettie and Arthur you could not wish for! And every Summer they go to the seashore.”

“The seashore? Where is that?” asked the Plush Bear. “Is it near the North Pole?”

“Oh, my, no!” answered the Rag Doll. “It is so long since I was at the North Pole, where I once lived in the shop of Santa Claus, that I have almost forgotten about it. But the seashore is quite different. I have been there with Nettie for two summers. And, now that you belong to Arthur, I suppose he will take you there. It is very jolly down on the warm sand near the sparkling waves.”

“I should very much like to see it,” said the Plush Bear.

There were other toys in the closet, and they talked and had a good time together that night when Arthur and Nettie were fast asleep.

And then began a happy life for the Plush Bear. The Christmas season came and went, and Nettie and Arthur received other toys, but none that they cared for any more than they did for the Rag Doll and the Plush Bear. During the Winter days and evenings other boys and girls came over to play with Arthur and Nettie, bringing their toys. In this way the Plush Bear again met the Lamb on Wheels and the Calico Clown, each of whom had been made as good as new by Mr. Mugg.