" 'Well, bear, get on with it,' said my ancestor. 'If I am to be ate, I do not want to be wasting time with preliminaries."
" 'Who said anything about eating you?' said the bear. 'People have always disagreed with me. I want to know what you mean by trying to poke me with that little pointed straw.'
" 'That is no straw but a spear, and I am after trying to kill you, because you are a bear and I am a man, and it is right and proper for the likes of me to kill the likes of you.' Then something about this conversation struck my ancestor as curious, for he was a clever man. 'And what are you doing, my good bear, talking to me like this? Is it that you are an enchanted bear?'
" 'I wondered how soon you would notice,' said the bear. 'Know that I am Prince Tasios of the Bastarnians. I was betrothed to the daughter of the king of the Elves, but Morrigana the witch, who. loved me, changed me into this shape in a fit of jealousy. And I cannot recover human form until I find a man who is willing to exchange shapes with me.'
" 'Indeed and it is a pleasure to meet you, sir,' said my great-grandfather. 'Know that I am Gargantyos of the Tektosages, who married the daughter of the king of the Elves.'
"At that the bear began to growl and roll back his lips, until the big white teeth of him stood up like the snow-covered peaks of the Rhiphaians. My great-grandfather saw that the bear would soon eat him out of simple jeaously, even though he suffered a bellyache afterwards. So my forebear said: 'Did you say something about finding a man to exchange shape with?'
" 'And would you be willing, now?' said the bear.
" 'I might,' said my great-grandfather. 'What sort of arrangements have you here for bearing it?'
"The bear waved a paw, pointing out where there was berries to be found in the fall, and the stream that the salmon came up, and the woods that had deer and rabbits, and all the other things needed for a bear's comfort. 'And my wife is sleeping in a cave on the north side of this hill,' said the bear.
" 'Is it a good wife that she is?' said my great-grandfather.
" 'A bear could not ask for better,' said the bear. 'How is dear Brigantia these days?'
" 'She grows more beautiful every day,' said my greatgrandfather, omitting any further description of the lady, to whom he had now been married for above two years and so knew her better than when he had first met her in the halls of the Elf-king.
"Well, the bear's eyes began to roll with thoughts of his lost love; so he and my great-grandfather each drew a drop of blood from his arm, and they mixed them. When they stood up, Prince Tasios had my great-grandfather's form, while my ancestor had the shape of the bear. And they parted with expressions of esteem.
"Now my great-grandfather thought: I have loved many a woman, but never a bear, to do which in my human form would be indecent not to mention unsafe. And he galloped off to the northern side of the hill and found the cave. There inside was the lady bear asleep with two little ones curled up beside her.
"When my great-grandfather had had his fill of looking upon this scene with eyes full of tender sentiment, he tried to wake up the lady bear. He had a terrible time getting her to waken at all. When she did and saw what he had in mind, she roared in bear language: 'Are you out of your wits? You know it is not the season!' And she set upon my poor ancestor and nearly clawed and bit him to death before he ran howling and bleeding out into the snow.
"Well, my ancestor recovered from that reception, except that a piece was bit out of one of his ears permanent. And he spent a dull winter digging mice and squirrels out of their holes to eat. But before the snow was all gone, who should come back but Prince Tasios, wearing my ancestor's body.
" 'What a dirty liar you are, Gargantyos!' he said. 'Why did you not tell me what I was getting into?'
" 'Liar yourself!' said my great-grandfather. 'I told you the true answer to your question, which is more than you did for me.'
"So Prince Tasios threw his spear at my ancestor, who knocked it aside and chased the prince up a tree. After much mutual roaring of insults, the prince called down: 'What is the matter with my wife? The bear one, that is. She was always a good wife to me, you ungrateful spalpeen!'
"When my ancestor told Tasios what had happened, the prince laughed so he nearly fell out of the tree. 'Of course not, your poor loon; bears have but one season for love, and that in the summer. I am the one with cause for complaint. No sooner did I put foot in your castle than dear Brigantia scolded me for tracking mud in on her clean floors. Then she scolded me for not bringing her a fur coat. Then she scolded me because at dinner I held the roast in place with my paws and put my mouth down to it, as any well-behaved bear would do. Then she scolded me for going to bed with my clothes on, as I had forgotten about this business of dressing and undressing. And when I finally got to bed, she kept waking me up by saying: 'Well?'
" 'The third time this happened, I said: 'Well, what?' And then she began to cry and say I did not love her any more.
" 'Now that I bethink me, I begin to understand what she was complaining about, for I had forgotten your beastly human habits in the years I lived out here. And, if you like, I will gladly be changing shapes with you again.' So they did: and each lived, if not happily ever after, at least wiser than they had been, which is the best that mortal creatures can reasonably expect. And the moral is that, if you cannot have what you think you want, it is often just as well."
When I got my breath from laughing, I said: "What are you going to do now?"
"I will be going back to the land of the Tektosages; a ship to Macedonia leaves tomorrow. To be sure, a fine thing it is to be a free man and an enrolled Rhodian tribesman, but it is well to live among your own people, too. Here, sir." He pulled out a heavily laden wallet and handed it to me. "Keep that for me, please, and let me not have any until I am after boarding my ship. It is my mustering-out pay. I know myself, and if I try to keep it, it will be all drunk up."
"Excuse me, O Chares," said another voice uncertainly from the doorway. Who should stand there but my old foe Kallias! I hardly knew him. His hair had grayed completely, and he had lost twenty or thirty pounds. The siege had aged him by decades; his skin had a grayish hue in lieu of its former ruddiness.
"Well?" I said.
"Well—ah—know, dear friend, that I am planning to leave Rhodes," he said. "As you are aware, I have run into difficulties here. They are not really my fault; the disfavor of Lady Luck and the conspiracies of jealous competitors caused them. However, you know how people talk. I doubt that I shall be able, therefore, to get good commissions in nearby cities like Knidos and Kôs.
"What I must do is to go far afield—say, to Byzantion or Syracuse—where none has yet heard these calumnies. And there is a difficulty. To move myself and my family such a distance takes more money than I have. So I wonder if I could not persuade you to lend me a little, just till I get established in my new home—"
"No," I said.
"Just a few drachmai? You are going to be successful, Chares, as I always said you would. You will never miss—"
"Not a half-farthing. Get out!"
"After all, I did give you your start—"
"Go!" I shouted, taking a step forward.
Kallias turned away with a sigh. As he disappeared, Kavaros said: "Master Chares, could you let me have a little silver out of that wallet I just gave you?"