The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat | Page 8

for all the world to see. And there were all the wonderful caves and holes and hiding-places under the bank which had been known only to Jerry Muskrat and Billy Mink and Little Joe Otter, because the openings had always been under water. Now anybody could find them, for they were plainly to be seen. And where had always been smiling, dimpling water, Jerry saw only mud. It was mud, mud, mud everywhere! The bulrushes, which had always grown with their feet in the water, now had them only in mud, and that was fast drying up. The lily-pads lay half curled up at the ends of their long stems, stretched out on the mud, and looked very, very sick. Jerry turned towards the Laughing Brook. There was just a little, teeny, weeny stream of water trickling down the middle of it, with here and there a tiny pool in which frightened trout and minnows were crowded. All the secrets of the Laughing Brook were exposed, just as were the secrets of the Smiling Pool. Jerry knew that if he wanted to find Billy Mink's hiding-places, all he need do would be to walk up the Laughing Brook and look.
"Yes, Sir, the world has turned upside down," said Jerry in a mournful voice.
"I believe it has," replied Grandfather Frog, looking up from the little pool of water left at the foot of the Big Rock.
"I know it has!" cried Jerry. "I wonder if it will ever turn upside up again."
"If it doesn't, what are you going to do?" asked Grandfather Frog.
"I don't know," replied Jerry Muskrat. "Here come Little Joe Otter and Billy Mink; let's find out what they are going to do."
CHAPTER XI
: Five Heads Together
Something had to be done. Jerry Muskrat said so. Grandfather Frog said so. Billy Mink said so. Little Joe Otter said so. Even Spotty the Turtle said so. The Laughing Brook couldn't laugh, and the Smiling Pool couldn't smile. You see, there wasn't water enough in either of them to laugh or smile, and nobody knew if there ever would be again. Nobody had ever known anything like it before, and so nobody knew what to think or do. And yet they all felt that something must be done.
"What do you think, Billy Mink?" asked Grandfather Frog.
Billy Mink looked down from the top of the Big Rock into the little pool of water that was all there was left of the Smiling Pool. He could see a dozen fat trout in it, and he knew that he could catch them just as easily as not, because there was no place for them to swim away from him. But somehow he didn't want to catch them. He knew that they were frightened almost to death already by the running away of nearly all the water from the Laughing Brook and the Smiling Pool, and somehow he felt sorry for them.
"I think that the best thing we can do is to move down to the Big River. I've been down there, and that's all right," said Billy Mink.
"That's what I think, " said Little Joe Otter. "There's no danger that the Big River will go dry."
"How do you know?" asked Jerry Muskrat. "The Laughing Brook and the Smiling Pool never went dry before."
"It's a long, long way down to the Big River," broke in Spotty the Turtle, who travels very, very slowly and carries his house with him.
"Chugarum! I, for one, don't want to leave the Smiling Pool without finding out what the trouble is.
"There's nothing happens, as you know, But has a cause to make it so.
"Now there must be some cause, some reason, for this terrible trouble with the Smiling Pool, and if we can find that out, perhaps we shall know better what to do," said Grandfather Frog.
Jerry Muskrat nodded his head. "Grandfather Frog is right," said he. "Of course there must be a cause, but where are we to look for it? I've been all over the Smiling Pool, and I'm sure it isn't there."
Grandfather Frog actually smiled. "Chugarum!" said he. "Of course the cause of all the trouble isn't in the Smiling Pool. Any one would know that!"
"Well, if you know so much, tell us where it is then!" snapped Jerry Muskrat.
"In the Laughing Brook, of course," replied Grandfather Frog.
"No such thing!" said Billy Mink. "I've been all the way down the Laughing Brook to the Big River, and I didn't find a thing."
"Have you been all the way up the Laughing Brook to the place it starts from?" asked Grandfather Frog.
"No-o," replied Billy Mink.
"Well, that's where the cause of all the trouble is," said Grandfather Frog, just as if he knew all about it. "It's the water that comes down the Laughing Brook that makes the Smiling Pool, and the