He was just slipping it back into his pocket when Louie Thomson called out, “Please, Tommy, let me come over and see your animals. Honest, I won’t hurt ’em.”
Splash went Doctor Muskrat into his pond. Flick went Nibble into the Pickery Things. Scratchy-scramble went Tad Coon up into a tree. Te-flap, te-flap went Stripes Skunk for his hollow oak, his pigeon-toed feet just slapping the ground and his long draggly tail trailing between them. Nobody stayed but Tommy’s dog, and he was bristling and growling.
“Aw, gee!” said the bad boy. “I only wanted a look at that cute one who was clawin’ at you. How’d you make ’em come to you?”
Tad Coon finds a new kind of bug
“I don’t,” said Tommy. “Maybe it’s because I feed them.” You see he didn’t know he’d made any compacts with them. Nobody could explain them to him. But it didn’t matter, because he really meant to keep them.
“What do you feed them?” said Louie. “I wish they’d be like that with me.”
“Gr-r-r!” growled Tommy’s dog. “It’s all sticks and no bones wherever you are. You’d have a better chance of making friends if you’d say, ‘Wisht I’d be like that with them.’” But even Tommy didn’t understand him.
CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE OF THE POTATO BUGS
You never saw any one so puzzled as Stripes Skunk and Tad Coon after Tommy had gone running back to the barn to milk his cows with that shiny watch ticking away in his pocket. “I didn’t hear it tell Tommy to do anything,” said Tad. “It was just saying the same thing over and over again all the time.” Because it made a noise Tad thought of course the watch was talking. He never knew the black marks on its face meant anything more to Tommy than Tommy would have known the black spots on a nice little orange-coloured ladybug meant anything to Tad Coon.