CHAPTER XXV: Paddy The Beaver Decides To Stay

"The fair Green Meadows spreading wide,
The Smiling Pool and Laughing Brook --
They fill our hearts with joy and pride;
We love their every hidden nook."

So said Jerry Muskrat, as he climbed up on the Big Rock in the
middle of the Smiling Pool, with Paddy the Beaver beside him, and
watched the dear Smiling Pool dimpling and smiling in the moonlight,
as he had so often seen it before the great trouble had come.

"Chugarum!" said Grandfather Frog in his great deep voice from the
bulrushes. "One never knows how great their blessings are until they
have been lost and found again."

The bulrushes nodded, as if they too were thinking of this. You see
their feet were once more in the cool water. Paddy the Beaver seemed
to understand just how every one felt, and he smiled to himself as
he saw how happy these new friends of his were.

"It surely is a very nice place here, and I don't wonder that you
couldn't bear to leave it," said he. "I'm sorry that I made you all
that trouble and worry, but you see I didn't know."

"Oh, that's all right," replied Jerry Muskrat, who was now very
proud of his big cousin. "I hope that now you see how nice it is,