Then, all in a crowd, they hurried on toward the road that led to White Farm. They had not gone very far when there appeared two men coming toward them. They were talking together in excited French. They stopped and asked if anybody had seen a big bear.
“Oui, oui,” nodded Solita and she launched out into a long talk in French that nobody else understood. It seemed that that was really the bear Sue and Solita had run away from and he wasn’t a wild bear but a tame one that would dance with a pole while the men sang French songs. They had stopped to get a drink of water at a farm and the bear had got off someway, when their backs were turned. They were delighted to know where he was and Solita and Sue, reassured, offered to show the way. So again they started toward the funny, old-fashioned house in a crowd together.
They came upon the bear, still eating blackberries on the doorstone--he hadn’t budged! And when the Frenchmen called him, he came meekly. Then all the children stood around in the dooryard while the bear that Solita and Sue had escaped from danced and danced. He turned somersets, too! It was fun.
And then the men took off their caps and turned and went down the overgrown driveway and off up the road. The children were already busy with the blackberries. “I might go down cellar now, Solita,” laughed Sue, “but I don’t believe I want to. Maybe there’d be another bear there. I’ve had enough of one, even a tame one, haven’t you?”
Solita laughed. “Our blackberries are all eaten,” she said. “We’d have to begin to pick again to fill the basket and the pail. I move we all go home, for I think it’s nearly lunch time.”
But everybody wanted to go into the house and slide down the roof, while little Albert made believe he was the bear and said “Grrr-r” on the doorstone. It really _was_ a blackberry adventure for a summer day!
_September was almost school time again. There seemed to be a long, hard thing in the September pocket that was not the story pocket. Marjorie said it felt as if it were a stick of candy. She had wanted to open the surprise long before September 13th, the date set, had come. But at last it was September 13th and she tore open the seals that held that leaf of the Surprise Book’s pocket tight. There was--why, a pencil! Why hadn’t she ever guessed that! It was a pencil painted pink and it had a rubber at its end. It had a pretty card tied to it that said, “Use this when you go to school tomorrow.” The story Marjorie opened that evening after supper. It was called “Betty Crusoe.”_