Page:The red book of animal stories.djvu/170

 The promise, and the immediate removal of Tom, appeared to satisfy the complainants. The porter's little girl dried her eyes, the old lady paused in the middle of her third attack of hysterics, and the bridegroom nobly declared his willingness to content himself with some other delicacy for want of a tipsy-cake.

All retired to their own apartments, and an hour later everything was as still as usual.

As for Tom, he first tried, like Enceladus, to get rid of the mountain weighing on him; but finding he could not succeed, he made a hole in the wall and passed through it into the garden of the adjoining house.

II

The tenant of the ground-floor of No. 107 was not a little surprised next morning at seeing a bear walking about amidst his flower beds. He had just opened the glass door leading to the garden steps with a view to enjoying the same exercise, but he quickly shut it again, and proceeded to examine the strange intruder through its panes.

Unluckily the hole Tom had made in the wall was hidden by some shrubs, so there appeared to be no clue as to where he came from. The ground-floor tenant then remembered having read lately in his newspaper an account of a most remarkable shower of toads which had fallen at Valenciennes, accompanied by thunder and lightning. The toads, moreover, fell in such quantities that the streets and roofs of the houses were covered with them.

The ground-floor tenant raised his eyes, and seeing a sky as black as ink overhead, and a bear, for which he could in no way account, in his garden, he began to fear that the Valenciennes phenomenon was about to be repeated on a larger scale, and that, in fact, Tom was but the first drop of a heavy shower of bears.