"Have a care, Steve!" Max called out, as the one who was making his way around the little bayou slipped, and splashed the water in his eagerness to accomplish the errand that had taken him there; "you'll get a ducking yet if you don't slow up some! Rome wasn't built in a day, remember!"
"Yes," added Toby, "and you b-b-bet the w-w-water's c-c-cold right now! Don't I k-k-know when I p-p-put my hand in?"
"Oh! don't bother your heads about me," sang out Touch-and-go Steve, carelessly; "I guess I c'n look out for myself all right. One more turn and I'll be there. And I c'n see your eyes stickin' out of your heads when you handle this gi-gantic frog of mine! Wow! but he is a whopper, though!"
He seemed so eager to lay hands on his prize, just as though the big greenback might recover, and hop into the pond before his very eyes, that possibly Steve was not quite as careful as his boastful words would indicate.
"I don't know about taking any frog legs home this time," Bandy-legs was saying, in a half regretful tone; "our girl says she won't cook the same, and my folks seem like they was set against frog for eatin'. Now I like 'em first-rate, but you see I've just got to keep on the good side of our cook, 'cause she gives me lots of scraps for my pet cub. And if that cute little bungler don't improve pretty soon, I just don't know what I'm agoin' to do with him. He makes us so much trouble all the time, playin' his innocent pranks, but scarin' the cook half out of her seven senses."
Thereupon Toby became tremendously excited, and pawed at the sleeve of Bandy-legs eagerly, while as soon as he could control his lips and his vocal chords he started in to say:
"Oh! g-g-give him to me, won't you, Bandy-legs? I'd be the happiest fellow you ever s-s-saw if I had a real live b-b-bear of my own. S-s-say, just name your p-p-price, and if I've g-g-got anything you want right b-b-bad it's yours. That c-c-cook of yours is set against p-p-poor Nicodemus, who c-c-came in the night, and was g-given that name. Think it over, Bandy-legs."
The other looked at the eager speaker, and grinned.
"Perhaps I may, Toby," he remarked, slowly; "anyhow, I'll promise to keep you in mind, and if I do want to get shut of Nicodemus you'll have first chance. It's goin' to be money in my pocket if I do let him go, because he costs me like anything. Oh! listen to Steve, would you; he's sure enough gone and fallen in, after all your warnin' him to go slow!"
It seemed to be just as Bandy-legs said, if one could judge from the tremendous amount of splashing that came to their ears, Steve being shut out from their view temporarily by a thick clump of alders that grew on the brink of a little trickling stream emptying into the pond just there.