She wanted to know why I had allowed Jonathan—a young boy and the main human character in the story—so foolishly to confront the bear. In the story, Jonathan’s father objected to his behavior, too . . . strenuously.

“How could you?” he [Jonathan’s father] said, over and over again. “How . . . could . . . you? You might have been killed.”

And even Jonathan knew what his father said was true. When he had stood, almost nose to nose with Trouble, when he had seen the desperation in the bear’s eyes, he knew he had made the wrong choice. The young brownie might have swung at him as easily as he had at Mama Goose, and a boy would have about as much chance against such a blow as a too noisy goose. Everything had worked out, yes, but still he knew that he had made the wrong choice.

And how glad he was to be alive to know it.

I could only respond by saying that I don’t write stories in order to create models for behavior, that if characters in stories always did what they should, we would have few stories . . . certainly few interesting ones. And yet I knew that my answer would not satisfy my critic any more, I’m sure, than my other answer must have pleased the reporter.