Well! After he had got his breath again Cuffy began to nibble at his
snow mittens. And little by little--to his delight--he removed them. And
still he kept on nibbling at his paws, and--yes! he actually put them
right inside his mouth and sucked them. He forgot all about his
_manners_, for underneath the snow he found the most beautiful, waxy
maple-sugar you can imagine. Each paw was just one big lollypop! And
though his burns still hurt him, Cuffy did not care very much. For those
lollypops were _two hundred times_ sweeter than anything he had ever
tasted in all his life!




VII

THE ICE GOES OUT OF THE RIVER


Farmer Green had taken his sap-buckets off the maple trees and _that_
meant the spring was fast going. At least, that was what Mr. Bear said.
And Cuffy noticed that every day there was a little less snow than there
had been the day before.

"The ice will soon go out," Mr. Bear said to Cuffy's mother at breakfast
one morning, "and then when I cross Pleasant Valley I shall have to swim
the river."

Cuffy knew that his father meant Swift River. In summer Cuffy could look
down from Blue Mountain and see the stream as it flashed through the