A minute passed, two, four. What had happened to him? Nibble began to remember how ungrateful he had been. He also remembered that Slyfoot the Mink might be creeping up, or the Brown March Hawk peering about as he flew by. He craned his neck and saw something floating down from upstream as softly as a stick in the current. It was the fat old doctor with a big root in his mouth.
Dr. Muskrat pulls Nibble out of the broad pond
He slipped up beside Nibble without a sound. “I had to scour the bottom to find this,” he explained. “It’s water chinquapin and it has properties.”
He said this so mysteriously that Nibble dared not ask him what “Properties” were, so he tasted a little, very carefully, to see. Did you ever taste a water chinquapin yourself? It’s delicate and jelly-like, but so sweet and rich that you’d risk stepping on old Grandpop Snapping Turtle himself to get some more. Nibble scraped the very rind of it. And then he thanked Doctor Muskrat for taking so much trouble over him.
“Well,” growled the old doctor in a very pleased tone, “I’m glad you have found your manners, if not your courage. Now snuggle up and go to sleep.” And so Nibble cuddled against him in a nice warm lump to sleep off his fullness.
He didn’t wake until the pink reflections from the setting sun were dying out of the west and stars were already twinkling in the sky. Doctor Muskrat was studying their reflections where they sparkled in the pool. He was saying something to himself.
“By dusk and by dawn he shall travel alone
And all troubles are his excepting his own.”
“Is that right?” and he pricked his ears. Nibble’s own ears flew up, but he couldn’t hear a word from those stars, dancing softly on the water in the night wind. That was because this was deep and secret magic.