BILLY AND LITTLE JOE DECIDE TO GO VISITING
Don’t scoff at one who runs away;
He’ll live to scoff at you some day.
_Billy Mink._
After visiting the Smiling Pool and warning Little Joe Otter and Jerry
Muskrat to watch out for traps, Bobby Coon decided that the Laughing
Brook was altogether too dangerous a place for him, so he turned back
into the Green Forest, firmly resolved to keep away from the Laughing
Brook. Billy Mink and Little Joe Otter talked things over.
“I found three traps,” said Billy Mink. “There may be some I have not
found. Anyway, it is certain that when that trapper finds that I know
about those traps, he will set some more. I don’t believe he is smart
enough to hide a trap so that we cannot find it. But you know, accidents
will happen. He knows that you and I live along the Laughing Brook and
he will simply make life miserable for us by continuing to set traps. Do
you know what I believe I’ll do?”
“What?” asked Little Joe Otter.
“I believe I’ll go away for a visit,” replied Billy Mink. “I’ve been
feeling rather restless for some time, anyway, and there isn’t any
better time of year to go visiting than right now, before the snow and
ice come. There’s a certain brook some distance from here that for a
long time I’ve been thinking of visiting. I believe I’ll start to-night
and I’ll stay long enough for this trapper to get tired of setting traps
and catching nothing.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Little Joe Otter. “I believe I’ll go visiting
myself. I always did like to travel. There is no sense in taking foolish
risks, and that is just what we would be doing by staying here. I think
I’ll go down to the Big River and stay awhile. The fishing here isn’t as
good as it might be, anyway. I wonder if Jerry Muskrat will go visiting
too. Let’s tell him what we are going to do and see if he wants to go
along with one of us.”
“He can’t go with me,” declared Billy Mink, in a most decided tone. “He
travels too slowly. I don’t believe he would want to go with me anyway,
because, between you and me, I suspect Jerry is a little afraid of me.”
Little Joe Otter grinned. “I guess he has reason to be,” said he. “I’ve
been told that the Mink family has a liking for Muskrat meat. I hardly
think he’ll want to go along with me either, because he is such a
home-loving body. But anyway, we’ll tell him what we’re going to do and
then he can do as he pleases.”
So Billy Mink and Little Joe Otter hunted up Jerry Muskrat and told him
how they were going to fool the trapper by going visiting. They urged
him to do the same thing.