"I believe——" he said to old Mr. Crow—"I believe I'd better wait till to-morrow before I try to fly. I've just had a long swim, you know. And I want to[p. 33] feel fresh when I take my first lesson."
"Nonsense!" Mr. Crow exclaimed. "Everything's all ready. You're not too tired, are you, to climb to the top of the bluff?"
"No," Timothy Turtle admitted.
"Then you've no reason for waiting," Mr. Crow assured him. "Coming down will be much easier than going up."
"I dare say that's true," Timothy remarked. "But I don't quite like to think about this business of flying."
"Then you certainly ought not to wait any longer," Mr. Crow urged him. "For the longer you wait the more time you'll have to think."
That appeared to Timothy Turtle to be a good bit of advice. And yet he still seemed uneasy.
"There's just one thing that troubles me," he confessed. "After I've jumped[p. 34] from the rock I might find that I couldn't fly. And I'd get a bad fall."
"But you'd land in the water," Mr. Crow reminded him. "And that would be much better than falling on the land.... I don't need to tell you," he added, "that water is soft. And you're a fine swimmer."
So Timothy Turtle yielded. And thereupon he began to drag himself up the steep bluff.