handy, too."

"What for?" Mr. Heron inquired.

"Why, for making button-holes!" Ferdinand Frog exclaimed.

XVIII

MAKING BUTTON-HOLES

Mr. Heron couldn't help being interested.

"Button-holes in what?" he asked Ferdinand Frog.

"Why, in suits of clothes, of course!" the tailor answered. "If you had
a tailor's shop, as I have, you'd find that bill of yours a handy thing
to have. When you wanted to make a button-hole in a piece of cloth all
you'd need do would be to stick your bill through it."

"I'd like to try that," Mr. Heron remarked.

"Then come right over to my shop," Mr. Frog urged him. "I'll let you
make all the button-holes you want."

"Very well!" Mr. Heron agreed. "I'll make button-holes until I get
hungry."

"That's a good idea!" Mr. Frog cried. And his new friend smiled, for he
thought the tailor must be very stupid. He intended to stay with Mr.
Frog until he was hungry enough to eat him. And no one who wasn't
dull-witted could have failed to grasp his plan.

Well, they started off together; and they arrived shortly afterward at
the tailor's shop.

Observing that Mr. Heron was altogether too big to squeeze inside the
tiny building, Mr. Frog entered it, to reappear soon with an armful of
cloth.

On this Mr. Frog proceeded to mark a row of dots. And then he hung the
cloth upon some reeds.

"There!" he announced. "Can you hit the mark?"

"Certainly I can," Mr. Heron replied. And quick as lightning his sharp
bill darted out and made a neat hole exactly where every dot had been.

"Splendid! Perfect!" Mr. Frog exclaimed. And thereupon he brought forth
more cloth.

In a surprisingly short time Mr. Heron had made eighty-seven
button-holes. But Mr. Frog noticed that beginning with the
seventy-seventh button-hole the stranger's aim began to fail. He did not
hit the dots quite squarely. And he seemed not to have his mind on his
work.

"What's the matter?" Mr. Frog inquired. "Are you getting tired?"

"No--not tired," Mr. Heron told him.

"Are your eyes troubling you?" the tailor asked him.

"No--I can see well enough," Mr. Heron replied. "But I'm beginning to
feel a bit faint. And I think I've made enough button-holes for one
day."

But Mr. Frog said that he had a special suit which he was making for
somebody. And he begged Mr. Heron to make the button-holes in that too.

Mr. Heron frowned. But presently he yielded, telling Mr. Frog to hurry,
for he had another matter to attend to.