CHAPTER XVII: Who Had Made The Strange Pond?

Who had made the strange pond? That is what Spotty the Turtle wanted
to know. That is what Billy Mink wanted to know. So did Little
Joe Otter and Jerry Muskrat and Grandfather Frog, when they arrived.
So did Ol' Mistah Buzzard, looking down from the blue, blue sky. It
was very strange, very strange indeed! Never had there been a pond
in that part of the Green Forest before, not even in the days when
Sister South Wind melted the snow so fast that the Laughing Brook ran
over its banks and the Smiling Pool grew twice as large as it ought
to be.

Of course some one had made it. Spotty the Turtle had known that as
soon as he had seen the strange pond. All in a flash he had
understood what that wall of logs and brush and mud across the
Laughing Brook was for. It was to stop the water from running down
the Laughing Brook. And of course, if the water couldn't keep on
running and laughing on its way to the Smiling Pool, it would just
stand still and grow and grow into a pond. Of course! There was
nothing else for it to do. Spotty felt very proud when he had
thought that out all by himself.

"This wall we are sitting on has made the pond," said Spotty the
Turtle, after a long time in which no one had spoken.

"You don't say so!" said Billy Mink. "How ever, ever, did you guess it?
Are you sure, quite sure that the pond didn't make the wall?"

Spotty knew that Billy Mink was making fun of him, but he is too