VIII
TURNING TURTLE
So Timothy Turtle struggled up the steep face of the bluff. And as he neared the top Mr. Crow began to hop up and down upon the old pine stump. He was almost bursting with silent laughter. But he succeeded in keeping quiet. And now and then he made threatening motions toward Jasper Jay and his friends, who stuck their heads from behind limbs of trees and hummocks and bushes, lest they miss any of the fun.
Once on top of the great rock that capped the bluff and hung out over the creek, Timothy Turtle clung there and peered down at the gently flowing water below.
"What a long way it is down there!" he called to Mr. Crow.
"Don"t think about that!" Mr. Crow cautioned him.
"Is this the way Mr. Alligator learned to fly?" Timothy Turtle demanded.
"Don"t think about him!" Mr. Crow shouted. "Just jump out as far as you can!"
"I believe I don"t care to fly to-day," Timothy Turtle faltered, drawing back from the edge of the rock. "I----I"ll wait till some other time.
You know, I"m older than you are."
"Tut, tut!" said Mr. Crow. "When I"m your age I shall still be flying as well as I do now. It"s nothing, when you know how. Nothing at all!"
Urged by Mr. Crow, Timothy Turtle once more crept to the very edge of the cliff and stretched his neck out as far as he could, to gaze down at the black water. And at last, after making several false starts and drawing back to a place of safety, he stood up on his hind legs, shut his eyes, and hopped off into s.p.a.ce.
Now, the moment Timothy Turtle leaped from the top of the bluff a deafening squawk broke the silence. Old Mr. Crow _cawed_ as loud as he knew how. But the racket he made was as nothing compared with the uproar of Jasper Jay and the noisy crew he had brought with him. They squalled with delight as Timothy Turtle plunged through the air like a stone. And when he landed upside down in the 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 ash.o.r.e. 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.
n.o.body meeting Timothy Turtle on one of those journeys would have suspected that he was bent on pleasure. Or at least, n.o.body 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 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.