Father Bear and
Bobby Bear

By
Howard B. Famous

FULLY ILLUSTRATED

FATHER BEAR AND BOBBY BEAR WERE ON THEIR WAY

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Bobby Bear

THE BEARS' CAVE

Over where the sun sank to rest every night like a great ball of fire, there lived three brown bears.

There was Father Bear, with a great, gruff voice. And Mother Bear, whose voice, while not so loud nor so gruff as father's, yet was not nice for little boys and girls to hear. And there was little Bobby Bear. His voice was sweet, for he was very young.

All of the bears had lovely, brown skins. When the sun shone on them they looked like rich, brown velvet. And when they were curled up, asleep, they looked like great balls of brown fur.

The bears' eyes were big, and round, and black as coals.

They had great, strong claws on all their paws.

With bears, you know, hands and feet are very much alike, and are called forefeet and hindfeet—or front feet and back feet. So instead of finger nails and toe nails they have claws.

But you are anxious to know something about Bobby Bear's home. It was in a great, gloomy cave. Only the front part had the sunshine. Away in the back part it was dark, pitch dark, like night.

The bears didn't mind this, of course, for when night came, instead of reading books like children and grown-ups, they just went right off to sleep.

BOBBY GROWS UP

Bobby Bear was growing to be a big bear, fast. Soon he would be a big-boy bear.

Most of the time he stayed at home with Mother Bear, helping her in the house when he wasn't playing.

It wasn't much fun for Bobby Bear to play. He had no other little bears for company. So he had to play and pretend bears were with him.

He would say, "You sit there, Little Gray Bear," or "Now, Little Black Bear, you be quiet."

One day Bobby Bear wandered down by the river, lonesome and sad. The rippling waters seemed to say to him that some day he would have a little playmate, just like little human children had.

And when he was in the forest he would stop and listen to the whispering of the trees. They, too, seemed to tell of the time when a little girl would bring a great joy to him—poor, lonely, little Bobby Bear.

So, in his own way—the way that all bears have of thinking—he felt sure that some day he would not be lonely any more, nor quiet, nor sad.

It may have been that very day, while Bobby Bear wandered in the forest, that Jane Bird was thinking of him, too. Such things do sometimes happen.

You see, Jane Bird lived with her father and mother, near the great forest where the Bear family made their home.

Jane Bird played with the other little children who lived near. Such fun as they had—running, jumping, skipping. And they played "school," and "keeping house," and pretended they were grown-up people. The days were full of laughter and of joy.

Neither Jane Bird's father, nor Jane Bird's mother nor, of course, Jane Bird herself, knew of what was soon going to happen.

They should have feared something, though, for one evening, just at dusk, when the sun was going down, away over by the dark woods, could have been seen three great forms. These were the bears going home to their cave.

BOBBY BEAR HAS TO HELP IN THE HOUSE

Early one morning, Bobby was wakened by his mother who called sharply: "Come, it is time to get up. You know you must