bear.

"Lover," I said as I knelt down by him in the dim old hall and put my
arms around him as if to shield him from some blow I couldn't help being
aimed at him, "you wouldn't mind much, would you, if just this time your
Molly couldn't go with you? Your father is going to take good care of
you and--and maybe bring you back to me some day."

"Why, Molly," he said, flaring his astonished blue eyes at me, "'tisn't
me to be took care of! I'm not going to leave you here for maybe a a
bear to come out of a circus and eat you up, with me and father gone.
'Sides, father isn't very useful and maybe wouldn't help me hold the
rope right to keep the whale from gitting away. He don't know how to do
like I tell him like you do."

"Try him, lover, and maybe he will--will learn to--" I couldn't help
the tears that came to stop my words.

"Now you see, Molly, how you'd cry with that kiss-spot gone," he said
with an amused, manly little tenderness in his voice that I had never
heard before, and he cuddled his lips against mine in almost the only
voluntary kiss he had given me since I had got him into his ridiculous
little trousers under his blouses. "You can have most a hundred kisses
every night if you don't say no more about not going, and make that
whale-hook for me quick," he coaxed against my cheek.

Oh, little lover, little lover, you didn't know what you were saying
with your baby wisdom, and your rust-grimy little hand burned the
sleep-place on my breast like a terrible white heat from which I was
powerless to defend myself. You are mine, you are, you _are!_ You