“Yes, but Tad doesn’t know Tommy,” Nibble pleaded. “He’s awfully afraid of being caught. You know how that hurts your own self. And lots of times they put coons in cages, and I didn’t like my cage. But he’s sorry as anything that he did it.”
“So I see,” said the doctor, just as gruffly as ever, and he dove back into the pond. Poor Tad hitched himself over to the flat stone so Nibble could fix his ears while he splashed the cool water over his nose and tongue. My, but he was meek! He didn’t even blame Doctor Muskrat for being angry with him.
Then suddenly up popped a head right beside him. “Open your mouth,” said the doctor. “Bite on that.” And he slipped a soft, soothing chewed root poultice on to Tad’s tongue. “Now raise your head.” And he clapped a blue clay plaster on Tad’s nose. “Snort!” And Tad snorted a pair of holes to breathe through. “There,” said he; “you’ll be all right before long.”
But Nibble had his ears pricked. “There comes Watch,” he said. “I heard him bark. Tad can’t run.”
“You hide him in the Pickery Things,” ordered the doctor. “I’ll try to get this matter settled.”
“M-m-m-m!” grunted Tad Coon gratefully through his poultice. And he limped off after Nibble, still holding up his nose.
CHAPTER V
THE TIME TAD COON WAS TRICKIER THAN HE KNEW
“Aough, aough!” barked Watch. “Yah!” he yapped breathlessly when he found Doctor Muskrat sitting out on the flat stone, waiting to meet him. “You’re just who I was looking for. Trailer just stumbled up to the house with his eyes bunged shut and his nose as big as a soupbone, mumbling something about a coon as near as I can understand him. But no coon ever did anything like that to him.”
The doctor cocked his ears. “Can’t talk, can’t he? Poor fellow. Did you try what blue clay will do for him? I’ll get you some.”
