CHAPTER XIX: Jerry Muskrat Has A Busy Day

There was the strange pond in the Green Forest, and there was the
dam of logs and sticks and mud which had made the strange pond, but
look as they would, Billy Mink and Little Joe Otter and Jerry
Muskrat and Grandfather Frog and Spotty the Turtle could see nothing
of the one who had built the dam. It was very queer. The more they
thought about it, the queerer it seemed. They looked this way, and
they looked that way.

"There is one thing very sure, and that is that whoever built this
dam had no thought for those who live in the Laughing Brook and the
Smiling Pool," said Grandfather Frog. "They are selfish, just
plain, every-day selfish; that's what they are! Now the Laughing
Brook cannot laugh, and the Smiling Pool cannot smile, while this
dam stops the water from running, and so --" Grandfather Frog
stopped and looked around at his four friends.

"And so what?" cried Billy Mink impatiently.

"And so we must spoil this dam. We must make a place for the water
to run through," said Grandfather Frog very gravely.

"Of course! That's the very thing!" cried Little Joe Otter and Billy
Mink and Jerry Muskrat and Spotty the Turtle. Then Little Joe Otter
looked at Billy Mink, and Billy Mink looked at Jerry Muskrat, and
Jerry Muskrat looked at Spotty the Turtle, and after that they all
looked very hard at Grandfather Frog, and all together they asked:
"How are we going to do it?"