“What in the world is the matter with that man?” thought Dido, as the dancing bear kept on climbing up the pole. “He acts so funny, just as if he did not want me to come near him. My master does not act so. For, though I know I used to be cross and growl at my master, and though I was afraid of all men, I am not that way any more. I like men. He looks like a nice man, up on the pole, and I want to see him. I never before saw a man who could climb a telegraph pole as well as I can.”
So Dido kept on climbing up, and the man continued to yell and shout. He went as far up the pole as he could get, and sat down on a stick of wood that stuck out crossways. There were wires made fast to glass knobs on the ends of these pieces of wood.
“He certainly is a queer man,” thought Dido. “He acts just as if he didn’t like me. Well, I’ll soon show him that I won’t hurt him. I wonder if he has a bun in his pocket?”
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Then, all of a sudden, Dido saw the man throw something down.
“Ah! Perhaps that is a bun,” thought Dido.
But Dido felt the thing the man had thrown down hit him hard on his nose, and it hurt so that the dancing bear gave a growl and a howl. It was a hard screwdriver that had hit Dido on the nose. The telephone lineman had thrown his screwdriver at the bear.
“Ouch!” said Dido to himself. “That was not nice! I wonder if he did that on purpose?”
Dido stopped climbing for a moment, and looked up at the man. Then the dancing bear rubbed his nose with his paw. A bear’s nose is very soft and tender, and when he is hit there it hurts him very much.
Then, as Dido was rubbing his sore nose, all of a sudden, Bang! something else was thrown by the man. It was a pair of pliers, for cutting wire, and they hit Dido on the paw he was holding up.
“Ha!” thought the dancing bear. “It is a good thing I had my paw over my nose, or I would be hurt worse than ever. I wonder why that man is throwing things at me, and shouting so?”
Just then Tom and George, the keepers of the bear, came running out of the field where they had been asleep under the haystack. They had
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 awakened, missed Dido, and had come to search for him.
“Why, look at our bear!” cried George. “He is up the pole.”
“So he is!” exclaimed Tom, in surprise.
Then the telephone lineman on the pole saw the other two men.
“Hi, there!” he called to them. “Is this your bear?”
“Surely that is our bear,” answered George.
“Well, then, I wish you’d call him down!” went on the lineman. “He chased up here after me to bite and scratch me. Call him down.”
“Ha! No!” laughed George. “Dido would never climb up to bite or scratch you. He is too good a bear for that. He is just climbing the pole, as that is one of his tricks.”
“What! Is this a trick bear? Is he tame?” asked the man high up on the pole.
“Of course he is tame,” said George.
“And he won’t hurt me?”
“Not a bit. He just wants to be friends with you.”
“Oh, then I am very sorry,” said the lineman quickly.
“Sorry for what?” asked Tom, curiously.
“That I threw my screwdriver and my pliers at your bear,” answered the man on the telegraph pole. “I hit him on the nose. I thought he was
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 a wild bear after me, or I never would have done it. I did not see any men with him.”
“Well, I guess Dido will forgive you for hitting him,” spoke George. “Come on down, Dido, if the man is afraid of you.”
“Oh, I am not afraid any more,” the telephone man said, laughing.
Dido came down, and had his breakfast with George and Tom. Afterward the telephone man climbed down, and gave Dido a piece of pie from his dinner pail.
“That is to pay you because I hit you on the nose,” said the man. “I am very sorry, and so I give you this little treat.”
And I think Dido understood, and forgave the man. For the dancing bear ate the pie, and then, when George told him to, Dido let the lineman pat him on the head.
“Now we will travel on again,” said George after a bit, and away he and Tom went with Dido, blowing nice tooting tunes on the brass horn, and giving a dancing-bear show wherever they could find a crowd of persons with money to toss into the hat.
All through the long summer days Dido traveled about with his masters, and then one day there came a change. One night, after he had danced many times that day, Dido and his masters stopped at a hotel. Dido was allowed to
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 sleep out in the stable where there were no horses to be frightened, while Tom and George went in the hotel to eat.
The next morning Dido saw a strange man with his masters when they came out to the stable to feed him.
“There is our dancing bear,” said George to the new man. “Do you think you would like to buy him?”
“If he can do all the tricks you say he can I may,” answered the other man.
“I will show you what tricks he can do,” spoke George. “Come, Dido, here is a sweet cracker for you. Now do your tricks.”
So out in front of the stable Dido danced, marched like a soldier and turned somersaults.
“Those are good tricks,” said the strange man. “I will buy you............