The Tale of Timothy Turtle | Page 8

chap called Brownie Beaver heard all this, as he stood in
Grandaddy's doorway and peeped inside the house. And he thought it
was a shame that somebody couldn't make Timothy Turtle mend his
ways. To Brownie Bearer it seemed that Timothy Turtle was old
enough to behave himself.

X
A WARNING

Timothy Turtle's visit at the beaver pond was just like all of his outings.
Wherever he went he was so disagreeable and snappish that there
wasn't a single person in the whole village that didn't wish Timothy had
stayed away from that place.
He was forever grumbling, complaining that the fishing was poor in the
pond. And as for frogs, he declared that he hadn't seen even one.
"Why anybody wants to live here is more than I can understand." That
was what Timothy Turtle told everyone he met. And of course it was a
poor way of making himself welcome.
"Why do you come here, if you don't like our pond?" people asked him.
"It's a change for me," was Timothy's reply. "After I've spent a week
with you I'll be pretty glad to get back home again. And I won't want to
go on another excursion for a whole year--or maybe two.
"It's twenty years since I was here before. And I sha'n't care to come
again for forty, at least."
Now, such dreadfully rude remarks hurt the Beaver family's feelings.
And when Timothy Turtle seized a fat lady by the tail one day and
wouldn't let her go until sunset, her feelings were hurt most of all. She
cried that she had never been so insulted in all her life.
Timothy Turtle merely said that she ought not to object. He explained
that he had been giving her a rest--for of course she couldn't cut down a
tree, nor work upon the dam that held the water in the pond, while he
clung fast to her tail.
Well, this fat lady happened to be Brownie Beaver's mother. And after
her disagreeable experience with the stranger, Brownie made up his
mind that he would make Timothy Turtle work. That was the worst
punishment he could think of.
Whenever the members of the Beaver family were not sleeping, or
eating, either they were gathering food by cutting down trees, or they

were mending their dam.
The dam always had leaks here and there. And sooner or later every
one of them had to be stopped, before it grew so big that the water
would rush through it and tear a hole so great that the pond would be
drained dry.
During his stay among the Beavers Timothy Turtle often crawled on
top of the dam and stretched himself out and watched the Beavers at
their task. He said that if there was one thing that he liked to see more
than another it was "a gang of men working." But he complained that
they ought to work in the daytime, when the sun was shining, because
then it would have been "much pleasanter for him."
"Don't you want to help us?" asked the brisk fellow who had told
Grandaddy Beaver that he thought Timothy Turtle ought to go to work.
That question actually made Timothy snort.
"Me work?" he snapped scornfully, as he glared at the speaker.
Everybody knew what he meant. And everybody knew how Timothy
felt, too, when he edged along the dam and made a savage pass at the
plump gentleman who had spoken to him.
[Illustration: Timothy began to climb the steep bluff.]
Luckily the brisk Beaver jumped aside before Timothy Turtle's jaws
closed on him. And he did not say another word to the stranger during
the rest of his stay at the pond.
But Timothy Turtle became quite talkative. He stopped all he met--old
and young both--and warned them that nobody need try to get him to
work, for he never had worked, and he never intended to.

XI

ON THE BEAVER DAM
Timothy Turtle was so angry that he went about snapping at everybody
and everything. And since the whole Beaver family kept carefully out
of his way, he had to content himself with setting his jaws upon roots
and sticks.
Now, the Beavers' dam was made of sticks and mud. So Timothy found
plenty of chances to bite. And because he could not hurt the sticks, no
matter how much he tried, nobody cared.
Really he acted in a most silly, surly fashion.
Out of a corner of his eye Brownie Beaver watched Timothy Turtle
closely. Brownie had not forgotten how Timothy seized his mother by
the tail. And while he was helping his elders on the dam, at the same
time he was trying to think of some way to outwit Timothy Turtle.
It happened that just at that time