STORY XV
BULLY AND THE BASKET OF CHIPS
One nice warm day, as Bully No-Tail, the frog boy, was hopping along through the woods, he felt so very happy that he whistled a little tune on a whistle he made from a willow stick. And the tune he whistled went like this, when you sing it:
“I am a little froggie boy,
Without a bit of tail.
In fact I’m like a guinea pig,
Who eats out of a pail.
”I swim, I hop, I flip, I flop,
I also sing a tune,
And some day I am going to try
To hop up to the moon.
“Because you see the man up there
Must very lonesome be,
Without a little froggie boy,
Like Bawly or like me.”
“Oh, ho! I wouldn’t try that if I were you,” suddenly exclaimed a voice.
“Try what?” asked Bully, before he thought.
“Try to jump up to the moon,” went on the voice. “Don’t you remember what happened to your brother Bawly when he tried to jump over the church steeple? Don’t do it, I beg of you.”
“Oh, I wasn’t really going to jump to the moon,” went on Bully. “I only put that in the song to make it sound nice. But who are you, if you please?” for the frog boy looked all around and he couldn’t see any one.
“Here I am, over here,” the voice said, and then out from behind a clump of tall, waving cat-tail plants, that grew in a pond of water, there stepped a long-legged bird, with a long, sharp bill like a pencil or a penholder.
“Oh ho! So it’s you, is it?” asked Bully, making ready to hop away, for as soon as he saw that long-legged and sharp-billed bird, he knew right away that he was in danger. For the bird was a heron, which is something like a stork that lives on chimneys in a country called Holland. And the heron bird eats frogs and mice and little animals like that.