mmered Peter.
"If I had, I would have been here long ago. If you please, how did you
know that I was coming and what I was coming for?"

"Never mind how I knew. I know a great deal that I don't tell, which
is more than some folks can say," replied Grandfather Frog.

Peter wondered if he meant him, for you know Peter is a great gossip.
But he didn't say anything, because he didn't know just what to say,
and in a minute Grandfather Frog began the story Peter so much wanted.

"Of course you know, without me telling you, that there is a reason
for Spotty's carrying his house around with him, because there is a
reason for everything in this world. And of course you know that that
reason is because of something that happened a long time ago, way back
in the days when the world was young. Almost everything to-day is the
result of things that happened in those long-ago days. The
great-great-ever-so-great grandfather of Spotty the Turtle lived
then, and unlike Spotty, whom you know, he had no house. He was very
quiet and bashful, was Mr. Turtle, and he never meddled with any one's
business, because he believed that the best way of keeping out of
trouble was to attend strictly to his own affairs.

"He was a good deal like Spotty, just as fond of the water and just as
slow moving, but he didn't have the house which Spotty has now. If he
had had, he would have been saved a great deal of trouble and worry.
For a long time everybody lived at peace with everybody else. Then
came the trying time, of which you already know, when those who lived
on the Green Meadows and in the Green Forest had the very hardest kind
of work to find enough to eat, and were hungry most of the time. Now
Mr. Turtle, living in the Smiling Pool, had plenty to eat. He had
nothing to worry about on that score. Everybody who lives in the
Smiling Pool knows that it is the best place in the world, anyway."

Grandfather Frog winked at Jerry Muskrat, who was listening, and Jerry
nodded his head.

"But presently Mr. Turtle discovered that the big people were eating
the little people whenever they could catch them, and that he wasn't
safe a minute when on shore, and not always safe in the water,"
continued Grandfather Frog. "He had two or three very narrow escapes,
and these set him to thinking. He was too slow and awkward to run or
to fight. The only thing he could do was to keep out of sight as much
as possible. So he learned to swim with only his head out of wa