Once upon a time, in a land covered with crisp white snow, there lived a big brown bear named Billy. The snow fell softly outside his warm lair and weeks passed by. But it was winter, and bears usually sleep the season through without waking. But Billy woke and peeked out of the entrance of his home. What do you think he saw?
Snow! Snow! Snow! It covered the ground, bushes, trees, and even the little house of the Brown Family, who were getting breakfast. All the world was as white as a big white sheet. Billy saw Pop and Mrs. Brown come to the door of their house, two children following them.
“What a splendid place for playing snowballs!” said Sammy Brown. “I should think that bear would love to come out the first thing in the morning and play in the snow with us.”
“I wonder why we never see Billy now-a-days,” said his sister Mary. “Let’s go over to his lair and see if he is home.”
The tracks of the two children who went in search of Billy led them right to the entrance of his lair. Pop and Mrs. Brown stood outside listening.
“Hello in there!” called Sammy. “Hello, Billy!”
“Hello! Hello! Hello!” came back the echoes from inside the dark home of Billy.
“Come out and play,” begged Mary Brown.
Billy pretended he didn’t hear, but he watched out through the icicles that hung like a fringe from the edge of his door. The children knocked, but Billy did not answer.
“What shall we do now?” asked Sammy.
“Let’s play snowballs,” suggested Mary. “I’m sure Billy is home, for I heard him echo hello in answer to us.”
“Maybe he is just getting awake, for bears take long naps in the winter,” said Sammy, and he threw some snowballs at the cave where Billy lived. But still the big brown bear did not come out.
Then Pop and Mrs. Brown whispered something to each other, and Sammy and Mary stood and listened. “Maybe we can help to get him out,” said Mrs. Brown. “Let me stick my broom in at the door.”
Mary and Sammy each took one of Pop Brown’s cane chairs and waiting, while Pop and Mrs. Brown began pushing the broom through into Billy’s room.
At first the bear just growled and said: “Oh, go away! Don’t bother me.” But the children kept getting snowballs ready to throw at him, for if they did not any one knew Billy would not answer.
“There is no fun in it,” growled Billy, “if you hit me with snowballs over my broom.”
“Where are you going, anyhow?” cried Mary Brown.
“To a Family Picnic,” answered Billy.
“Can’t we all go?” asked Pop Brown.
“You can’t walk very fast over the snow,” growled Billy.
“Let’s try,” cried Mary, and she and Pop and Mrs. Brown and Sammy began walking over the snow after the bear had taken the broom out through the door.
“This is going to be the funniest picnic,” said Billy, swaying his big body before him as he walked. “I can’t just imagine how it will be.”
“You’ll see soon,” said Pop Brown.
And they went on and on, Billy ahead with his little brown friends and their papa and mama behind.
But after a while it became so very, very deep with snow, that Pop Brown said: “I think you small children had better go home. You cannot walk about so well up to your knees in snow.”
“I can walk,” said Mary.
“And I can too,” said Sammy. But they had to turn back, for it was hard traveling.
After a while Pop and Mrs. Brown came to a great spot of bare black ground, where all the snow had been blown away. In the middle of this spot was a box with a tin cover that was used to carry lunch in.
“Our picnic is to be here,” said Billy the Bear. “I’m going to get wood and make a fire,” and he picked up stones in his paws and laid them to keep the wood from the ground.
Then Billy waddled away over a hill where there were many trees and soon came back with lots of wood on his back. Before long the fire was burning brightly, with lots of black smoke going up in the air.
“Now we’ll soon have lunch,” said Billy, and going to the box, he turned the cover up off his head, and what do you suppose was in the box?
Why, just the finest lunch you ever saw! There were fresh peanuts and hickorynuts and honey with big chunks made right from the honeycombs. There were cakes and pies and apples, more than the tree ever bore in his life, it seemed.
But most wonderful of all things in that lunch-box was a big snowman right out of the tin that was as big as a child, a snowman around which the snow never melts, whirling round and round in the box. This snowman is so very chilly that he keeps all other things cold. And after they had eaten this big lunch, sliming their paws and washing their faces in the brook and getting new snowballs ready so Billy could take them back; Mary and Sammy Brown, and Pop and Mrs. Brown walked home from the picnic, and Billy took all that honey, cakes, and other good things in his box, plus a whole lot of snowballs in his big brown paws, and so he was not even tired when he got home. After all the fun he had he climbed up on the snowy branches of the big tree near his lair and went fast asleep.
And why was it, do you suppose, that Pop and Mrs. Brown and Mary and Sammy laughed more than anything else that day? I cannot tell, unless it was to think Billy had eaten that nice lunch after he had slily pushed them all into the stream and floated home on top of the big ice cakes, for all were busy getting out as fast as they could.
But Billy, sleeping in the tree, only knew he had had a cozy picnic. And only the tree, he and the snow had seen it all happen, for surely I couldn’t know, could I?
So until my next story about him, that you will gladly come to hear, good-by to you, and the good Redfolks say good-by to you, also.