to be, if he piled up the mud that way? But he didn't like to ask
questions, so he kept right on helping. Paddy would dive down to
the bottom and then come up with double handfuls of mud, which he
held against his chest. He would scramble out onto the platform
and waddle over to the pile in the middle, where he would put the
mud and pat it down. Then back to the bottom for more.

And so the mud pile grew and grew, until it was quite two feet
high.

"Now," said Paddy, "I'll build the walls, and I guess you can't
help me much with those. I'm going to begin them tomorrow night.
Perhaps you will like to see me do it, Cousin Jerry."

"I certainly will," replied Jerry, still puzzling over that pile
of mud in the middle.



CHAPTER XI Peter Rabbit and Jerry Muskrat Are Puzzled.

Jerry Muskrat was more and more sure that his big cousin, Paddy
the Beaver, didn't know quite so much as he might about
house-building. Jerry would have liked to offer some suggestions,
but he didn't quite dare. You see, he was very anxious not to
displease his big cousin. But he felt that he simply had got to
speak his mind to someone, so he swam across to where he had seen
Peter Rabbit almost every night since Paddy began to build. Sure
enough, Peter was there, sitting up very straight and staring
with big round eyes at the platform of mud and sticks out in the