"I want to cut my initials on his shell and let him go," he explained. "Then if I catch him again when I'm grown up I'll know him when I find him.... I'll put the date under my initials, too," Johnnie added.
Farmer Green laughed.
"When you're grown up," he said, "you'll have something else to do besides catching snapping turtles. This afternoon you may carve your initials on the hay-rake and then take it over to the big meadow and play with it."
For a few moments Johnnie Green[p. 63] couldn't help looking glum. He had intended to visit the creek that very afternoon. But now he knew that his father expected him to work—to work on one of the finest days of the whole summer!
"I'll let you off all day to-morrow," Farmer Green said. "And you know there's that calf I told you I'd give you if you helped me with the haying."
And then Johnnie actually smiled.
Well, the next morning was just as fine as the afternoon before. And Johnnie Green set off early for Black Creek, with his pockets stuffed full of cherries, because he was afraid he might get hungry. He ate a few of them on the way to the creek. But when he reached that delightful place he found something that made him forget what he had in his pockets. For there near the top of the bank, too[p. 64] far from the water to escape him—there lay Timothy Turtle himself, taking a sun-bath on the warm sand.