CHAPTER III.
A RAINY DAY—STORY OF PRETTY AND THE BEAR.
WHAT a rainy day!’ said Alice, one morning, when Mary came to call them, and to help them to dress. ‘We cannot go out at all to-day.’
‘What a pity!’ said her little sister. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘What shall we do all day, if we cannot go out?’ said Alice.
‘The rain will make all your flowers grow, miss,’ said Mary, ‘and make the weather a little cooler.’
‘But I want to go out and dig in the sand,’ said Alice.
‘And so do I,’ said Beatrice.
Mary took no further notice of the children’s words; but when they were at breakfast, Alice said, ‘Grandmamma, is it not very tiresome that the rain is come to-day? We cannot go out. I wish that it would never rain.’
‘Nasty rain,’ said Beatrice; ‘I can’t bear the rain!’
‘You must not say that the rain is nasty, for it does a great deal of good, dear children. God sends us the rain when we want it, and we thank God for it.’
‘Why do you thank God, grandmamma,’ asked Alice, ‘for the rain? What good can the rain do?’
‘It makes the grass grow; and horses, cows, and sheep, and all other animals that eat grass, live upon it; and the rain makes the corn grow, and from corn we make our bread; and what would you or I do, or any one else, if the corn did not grow and we had no bread? The rain makes the trees and the flowers grow, and all the fruit too, and my little girls would be sorry if there were no fruit.’
‘Yes, indeed, grandmamma,’ cried both children.
‘But I thought,’ said Alice, ‘that the sun made the fruit ripe.’
‘Yes, so it does; but the sun alone could not make the plants grow, and the rain alone could not make the flowers open their leaves, or the fruit or the corn get ripe. We want both sun and rain, and we must thank God that He gives us enough of each to do good on earth.’
After the two little girls had finished their little lessons, and done all that their grandmamma wished them to do, she said to them—
‘As you have both been good this morning, and because it rains, I will tell you a story of my two dogs, when I lived in Russia.
‘It was a hot summer’s day, a long time ago, when my little dog Pretty came to me yelling and barking. I was busy writing in a little sitting-room that opened into my bedroom, and my rooms in Russia were all downstairs, as there was but one floor.
‘When I looked at Pretty, I saw that the dog was trembling all over, and every hair was standing up, for he was so frightened; and he whined and ran about, and howled and barked in great distress; and at last he ran into my bedroom, and crept under the bed, and there he lay trembling and whining.
‘All the doors stand open in a house in Russia; so I went into the hall and then out of the open front door, and I soon saw what was the cause of Pretty’s fear. There was a great brown bear; and though little Pretty had never seen a bear before, yet his terror was so great.
‘The bear had a leathern strap round his mouth, a small iron chain was fixed to the strap; and when I looked nearer, I saw that a hole had been made in the bear’s upper lip, and a ring was put through the hole, and the chain was fastened to the ring as well as to the leathern strap.
‘A Russian peasant was with the bear, and he wore blue striped linen trousers, and his trousers were tucked into his boots, but he had neither stockings nor socks. He had a red and white checked shirt, which hung loose over his trousers, and funny pieces of blue linen sewed into the sleeves of his shirt. He had a fur cap on his head, and in his hand he carried a long stout pole.
‘The Russian peasant called to the bear to get up, for the bear seemed tired, and had laid down to rest himself. The bear growled, but did not move at first, though his master shook the chain and pulled him by it; at last the man gave him a sharp blow with a whip he had, and told him to begin dancing.
‘The poor tired bear stood up on his hind legs, and took the pole from the man’s hand, and began to jump over it, but in a very clumsy manner. The man kept calling to him in a sing-song manner, pulling often with the chain, and giving him a smart cut with his whip: and the bear jumped backwards and forwards over the pole, or, as the man called it, danced, and grumbled and growled, for he seemed very cross and angry that he was obliged to do all this when he was so very hot and tired. I looked about to see where my good old dog Lion was all this time. Lion was a splendid dog, something like an English mastiff, and something like a lioness, and therefore I had named him “Lion.” He went out daily with the herd of cattle into the fields and woods, and saved many of them from being killed by the wolves. He was a brave dog, and I was very fond of him.
‘And where do you think I found Lion now?—not running away and hiding himself, like Pretty, in “the lady’s chamber,” but trying to make the bear afraid of him.
‘For Lion walked slowly up close to the bear, then went round him twice, looking at him well all the time, as if to say, “I am not in the least afraid of you, Mr. Bear,” and then Lion lay down on the grass in the shade, a little way off, but so that he should see him still, and went to sleep, or pretended to do so. I dare say that the bear thought he had better not go near such a brave dog, though he would have liked to give Lion a good hug, and eat him up.
‘At last the Russian peasant seemed as hot and as tired as the bear, and he asked for something to eat, and some spirits to drink. So I told a servant to bring the man some black bread and some beer and a little spirits, and I ordered some honey and some bread for the bear.’
‘Why did you give the poor man black bread, grandmamma?’ asked Alice.
‘In Russia, the servants and common people all eat black bread; the white bread which we eat here is only made for the rich people to eat!’
‘But why is that, grandmamma?’
‘It is because wheat, of which our white bread is made, does not grow nearly so well as rye in Russia and other cold countries: and rye makes black bread. It is not so good as wheat bread; but some people like it, and even prefer it.’
‘Please, Alice, let grandmamma tell us the story of Lion and the Bear,’ said Beatrice.
‘Well, my dear children, you would have been glad to see how the bear liked the bread dipped in honey, and how he drank the spirits and the beer; but the man did not give him much of either. Afterwards I gave the man some money, and the poor tired bear walked after his master, as well as he could, on his four feet. As soon as the bear was gone, out came Pretty from my bedroom, and began to bark very furiously, as if he had been a brave dog, and driven the bear away.’
‘Thank you, dear grandmamma,’ said both the little girls. ‘We like that story so much, pray tell us some more about your brave dog Lion, and about silly little Pretty, another day.’
‘But Pretty was not always silly, although he was afraid of a big bear. He was a knowing little dog, and so fond of us.’
‘I should have been afraid, I think,’ said Alice. ‘I should not like a bear to come to this house.’
‘There are no bears here, are there, grandmamma?’ asked little Beatrice.
‘And no horrid wolves?’ added Alice.
‘No, dear children, none, I am glad to say. When you read more in your history of England, you will read when the last wolves were killed in England: a very long time ago there used to be plenty of wolves here.’
The two little girls looked afraid; but they were very glad when grandmamma said—
‘That was a very, very long time ago.’
