Just take the ease of Jerry Muskrat. There he sat on the new dam,
which had made the strange pond in the Green Forest, shaking with
fear until his teeth chattered, as he watched a stranger very, very
much bigger than he climb up on the dam. Jerry was afraid, because
he had seen that the stranger could swim as well as he could, and as
Jerry had no secret burrows there, he knew that he couldn't get away
from the stranger if he wanted to. Somehow, Jerry knew without being
told that the stranger had built the dam, and you know Jerry had
twice made a hole in the dam to let the water out of the strange
pond into the Laughing Brook. Jerry knew right down in his heart
that if he had built that dam, he would be very, very angry with any
one who tried to spoil it, and that is just what he had tried to do.
So he sat with chattering teeth, too frightened to even try to run.

"I wish I had let some one else keep watch," said Jerry to himself.

Then the big stranger had spoken. He had said: "Hello, Jerry
Muskrat! Don't you know me?" and his voice hadn't sounded the least
bit angry. Then he had told Jerry that he was his big cousin, Paddy
the Beaver, and he hoped that they would be friends.

Now everything was just as it had been before -- the strange pond,
the dam, Jerry himself and the big stranger, and the black shadows
of the night -- and yet somehow, everything was different, all
because a few pleasant words had been spoken. A great fear had
fallen away from Jerry's heart, and in its place was a great hope
that after all there wasn't to be any trouble. So he replied to
Paddy the Beaver as politely as he knew how. Paddy was just as polite,
and the first thing Jerry knew, instead of being enemies, as Jerry
had all along made up his mind would be the case when he found the