3-With Zest in Life

Chapter 3 | Blue Bear

Blue Bear really was a curiosity; from the moment James put him in the house he was crawling around, climbing up on to furniture, and getting into everything. Once when James stepped outside to receive a delivery, Blue Bear went straight to James’ room and started pulling all the clothes from his dresser!

It wasn’t until that night that James found out about what had happened. He really should have sooner, though, because in the meantime Blue Bear had snuck outside dressed up as a businessman on his way to a very important meeting. Nobody knew who in the world it was when they looked out the window and saw a short figure in expensive clothes tripping and falling on the sidewalks of Marang!

”Why, he even painted his face BLUE!” someone yelled. “He must be a clown on his way to the circus!”

Of course, he wasn’t a clown, or a businessman, but he sure was blue! But since being blue wasn’t something he could change, he just had to live with it. When a neighbor finially recognized him, she scooped Blue Bear up into her arms and brought him back home.

After awhile, everything had more or less settled down in the neighborhood. Blue Bear was attending classes at Nie’s homeschool and learning to speak and write and add numbers. Both Blue Bear and Little White Bear were becoming very bright bears and it could easily be seen that their new parents were extremely fond of them.

At school and afterwards, the two bears were together. Little did they know it then, but they were forming a close friendship that would last a long time. Many autumn afternoons were spent walking through the woods together. Often one would stop to climb a tree or wade in the stream. This stream, called Beverly Brook, wove around the town of Marang, beside the sports fields, through the public garden, and finally flowed into the majestic Lake Champlain which borders the state of Vermont.