Of course it was a foolish question, but it popped out before he could check it.
“Frogs? Naw!” said Sammy in exaggerated denial.
“Frogs! Yah!” said the other boys, and hooted in derision.
“I seen a frog,” piped up a bright-eyed colored baby in a bathing suit improvised from underclothes, who sat on the stone curb and paddled his wriggling brown feet in the water.
“Seen a frog! Yes, like fun you did,” jeered his big brother.
“I did seen a frog,” reiterated the baby. “There, on the grass. There he is now.”
Wendell looked where the brown finger pointed. Could he believe his eyes? There on the grassy slope of the hill below the Soldiers’ Monument actually sat and blinked a green and speckled frog.
The brown baby and Wendell were not the only people who had seen him. A shout went up from the water, and at the same time an echoing shout arose from a group of small boys who were climbing around on a captured German tank on the crest of the hill. The boys on the tank began to scramble down.
The frog sat and blinked stupidly. It seemed dazed or injured, but as the tank contingent cast themselves down the hill, it leaped with that surprising suddenness that characterizes frogs, and with its long legs shooting behind, plunged head first down the slope and into the water. For the first time within the memory of this generation, there was a frog in the Frog Pond.
Wendell cast off his clothes and shoes and shot in after it. Whew! but the water was cold! And how to locate the frog? A needle in a hay stack couldn’t compare with it.