“Yes, it is I,” said the heron. “Won’t you please sing that song on your whistle again, Bully? I am very fond of music.” And, as he said that, the heron slyly took another step nearer to the frog boy, intending to grab him up in his sharp beak.
“I—I don’t believe I have time to sing another verse,” answered Bully. “And anyhow, there aren’t any more verses. So I’ll be going,” and he hopped along, and hid under a stone where the big, big savage bird couldn’t get him.
Oh, my! how angry the heron was when he saw that he couldn’t fool Bully. He stamped his long legs on the ground and said all sorts of mean things, just because Bully didn’t want to be eaten up.
“Now I wonder how I’m going to get away from here without that bird biting me?” thought poor Bully, after a while.
Well, it did seem a hard thing to do, for the heron was there waiting for Bully to come out, when he would jab his bill right through the frog boy. Then Bully thought and thought, which you must always do when you are in trouble, or have hard examples at school, and finally Bully thought of a plan.
“I’ll hop along and go from one stone to another,” he said to himself, “and by hiding under the different rocks the heron can’t get me.”
So he tried that plan, hopping very quickly, and he got along all right, for every time the heron tried to stick the frog boy with his sharp bill, the bird would pick at a stone, under which Bully was hidden, and that would make him more angry than ever. I mean it would make the heron angry, not Bully.
Well, the frog boy was almost home, and he knew that pretty soon the heron would have to turn back and run away, for the bird wouldn’t dare go right up to Bully’s house. Then, all of a sudden, Bully saw a poor old mouse lady going along through the woods, with a basket of chips on her arm. She had picked them up where some men were cutting wood, and the mouse lady intended to put the chips in her kitchen stove, and boil the teakettle with them.
She walked along, when, all of a sudden, she stumbled on an acorn, and fell down, basket and all, and she hurt her paw on a thorn, so she couldn’t carry the basket any more.
“Oh, that’s too bad!” exclaimed Bully. “I must help the poor mouse lady.” So, forgetting all about the savage, long-billed bird, waiting to grab him, out from under a stone hopped Bully, and he picked up the basket of chips for the poor mouse lady.