The Tale of Timothy Turtle | Page 7

creek, striking the water
with a great splash, the whole company shrieked louder than ever.
"Ha! ha! ha!" Mr. Crow cried, holding his sides and rocking backwards
and forwards upon the old stump.
"Jay! jay! jay!" Jasper and his friends bawled, hopping up and down
and cutting capers in the air.
As for Timothy Turtle, he made no sound at all. And neither did he
make the slightest motion. The current of Black Creek caught him and
bore him away down the stream. But at last he managed to paddle
ashore. And he pulled himself slowly out of the water, and lay upon the
sand and groaned.
Mr. Crow and his cronies gathered quickly about him.
"What's the matter?" Mr. Crow inquired. "Don't you like flying?"
It was some time before Timothy could answer.
"I've had an awful fall," he moaned finally.
"Where are you hurt?" Mr. Crow asked him.
"Everywhere!" Timothy Turtle told him. "I thought you said that water
was soft to fall into."
"Well, isn't it?"
"It certainly is not," Timothy Turtle declared. "I believe there's nothing
harder in the whole world.... I've heard, sir, that you are very wise. But
for once, anyhow, you've made a great mistake."
Old Mr. Crow coughed--and winked at his friends. "The trouble
was"--he explained--"the trouble was, you lost your balance and landed

in the creek upside down. And of course you couldn't fly in that
position. It's what's called 'turning turtle,'" he added, "and I might have
known--if I had stopped to think--that you'd be sure to do it."
"Well," said Timothy Turtle, drawing a long breath, "I'll tell you right
now that I'll never, never, turn turtle again."

IX
A PLEASURE TRIP
Almost always the wild folk in Pleasant Valley knew that if they
wanted to see Timothy Turtle they could find him somewhere in Black
Creek. But once in a great while he liked to go on what he called "an
excursion." By that he meant a pleasure trip to some spot not too far
away--never outside of Pleasant Valley.
Nobody meeting Timothy Turtle on one of those journeys would have
suspected that he was bent on pleasure. Or at least, nobody would have
supposed that Mr. Turtle had found what he was looking for. Certainly
if he was hunting for fun, he never looked as if he had discovered any.
For no smile showed itself upon his face. Instead, he met every one
with a frown. And if a body gave him a cheery "Good morning," just as
likely as not Timothy would answer with a grunt, and pass on.
Naturally, when Timothy Turtle arrived anywhere and told people that
he expected to spend a few days among them they did not feel any
great joy at the news. On the contrary, they were quite likely to say to
one another, "I hope he won't stop long," or "He looks more grumpy
than ever." And some would even remark that they wished Timothy
Turtle would go home and stay there.
So no one of the Beaver colony was glad when Timothy appeared in
their pond one day and explained that he intended to be in the
neighborhood at least a week. In the first place, the Beavers, as a whole,
were a busy, cheerful family, who did not like disagreeable folk for
company. And in the second place, they were spry workers; and they

had little use for anybody as slow as Timothy Turtle, who never did
any work at all.
It is no wonder, then, that as soon as the news of Timothy's coming
spread up and down and across the pond, the busy Beavers stopped
their work and said things about the crusty outsider who had forced
himself upon them. And almost everybody went to call upon
Grandaddy Beaver and asked him what he thought ought to be done.
Now, Grandaddy was a good old soul. And he told the hot-headed
younger members of the colony to keep cool, which seems a simple
thing for them to have done, swimming about as they were in the icy
water, which flowed down from springs on the side of Blue Mountain.
"Timothy Turtle has been here before," Grandaddy Beaver announced.
"I can remember my great-grandfather's telling me about his passing
two whole weeks in our pond. And though everybody wished he would
leave, he never harmed anybody, because people kept out of his way."
"Well, he ought to work while he's here," said a brisk gentleman,
tugging at his moustache.
"Timothy Turtle will never lift his hand to do a single stroke of work,"
said old Grandaddy Beaver. "He has already spent a long life without
working. And he'll be lazy if he lives to be a hundred years old--or even
a hundred and fifty."
Now, a young