After the last echo of the song had lost[p. 119] itself in the depths of Cedar Swamp, the singers all turned, smiling, to their listener.
But his face wore no smile. On the contrary, Timothy Turtle frowned darkly.
"You can't fool me!" he cried. "You don't like me! You don't want me here!"
Ferdinand Frog swallowed a few times.
"Well," said he, "of course my manners are so elegant that I simply couldn't dispute one of my elders. And anyhow, Mr. Turtle, you'd find that our singing sounded twice as well if you were half a mile away."
"It certainly couldn't sound any worse than it does here," Timothy Turtle declared—a remark which made the Frog family grin broadly.
He said no more, but slipped into the water and struck out towards home.
There was a lively scattering of those[p. 120] who found themselves in Timothy Turtle's path. And for a time it looked as if the singing party had broken up in disorder.
But after a while everybody came back again—that is, everybody but Timothy Turtle. He hurried away and spent most of the whole night buried in the mud at the bottom of Black Creek. For even until daybreak that merry song came floating now and then across Pleasant Valley.
And Timothy Turtle did not like it. He thought it not only loud and long, but most unpleasant as well.