BILLY BEAR.

Otago Witness, Issue 3994, 30 September 1930, Page 72

BILLY BEAR.

(Special for the Otago Witness.)

This week we have had some terrible tragedies in our house, particularly in connection with Billy. ' It happened that llosemary caught a very bad cold and had to go to bed for a few days. I said: What a nuisance—just when we are thinking about the holidays'. ” As a matter of fact, our holidays are nearly a month ahead; but Billy pricked up his ears and, of course, started to ask any amount of questions. His great point was—would he be able to save enough money to have plenty of wliat he calls slot machines ” when he is away with us!

“ Slot machines ” are all those things into which you put pennies and see pictures, or funny litle figures , working; and then, of course, there are those from which you get chocolate and sweetsBilly’s special favourites. I told him that I was not at all sure we would take him away with us, unless he was very good, and that in any case, if he wanted money he must save it when lie earned it.

Now that was a most fortunate remark,, because Billy set about earning money by being terribly useful about the house He tried to cut bread-and-butter when nobody was looking and sliced one of his paws —which he insists calling hands. Beino- awkward on account of having that paw°tied up in a huge bandage, next time he tried to cut something else (for cutting things seemed to be his chief idea of working) he took a lump out ot another paw; so there Iw was going about the house with two tied-up paws, and as he always waves them about when he speaks, you can imagine how idiotic he looked. Rosemary laughed at him so much that we knew she was getting better very quickly! But Billv doesn’t like being laughed at, so he sat down to write a letter to Rosemary telling her (so he told me afterwards, for the letter was liefer finished) that it was not polite to laugh at anybody what had got anything wrong with them —as indeed it is not, leaving aside Billy’s dreadful way of expressing himself. The letter, however, was never finished because Billy got his bandage in the ink, and then everything he touched on his way to tell me all about it was marked with a great inky blob. What the master said about Billy I couldn t repeat here!