“What?” asked Little Joe Otter.
“I believe I’ll go away for a visit,” replied Billy Mink. “I’ve been feeling rather restless for some time, anyway, and there isn’t any better time of year to go visiting than right now, before the snow and ice come. There’s a certain brook some distance from here that for a long time I’ve been thinking of visiting. I believe I’ll start to-night and I’ll stay long enough for this trapper to get tired of setting traps and catching nothing.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Little Joe Otter. “I believe I’ll go visiting myself. I always did like to travel. There is no sense in taking foolish risks, and that is just what we would be doing by staying here. I think I’ll go down to the Big River and stay awhile. The fishing here isn’t as good as it might be, anyway. I wonder if Jerry Muskrat will go visiting too. Let’s tell him what we are going to do and see if he wants to go along with one of us.”
“He can’t go with me,” declared Billy Mink, in a most decided tone. “He travels too slowly. I don’t believe he would want to go with me anyway, because, between you and me, I suspect Jerry is a little afraid of me.”
Little Joe Otter grinned. “I guess he has reason to be,” said he. “I’ve been told that the Mink family has a liking for Muskrat meat. I hardly think he’ll want to go along with me either, because he is such a home-loving body. But anyway, we’ll tell him what we’re going to do and then he can do as he pleases.”
So Billy Mink and Little Joe Otter hunted up Jerry Muskrat and told him how they were going to fool the trapper by going visiting. They urged him to do the same thing.
CHAPTER XII
BILLY HAS THE WANDERING FOOT
If to yourself you would be true,
Use all the talents given you.
Billy Mink.