XIV
HOW OLD MR. TREE TOAD FOUND OUT HOW TO CLIMB
Of all the puzzling things over which Peter Rabbit had sat and thought and wondered until the brains in that funny little head of his were topsy-turvy, none was more puzzling than the fact that Sticky-toes the Tree Toad could climb. Often Peter had watched him climb up the trunk of a tree or jump from one branch to another and then thought of Old Mr. Toad, own cousin to Sticky-toes, and of Grandfather Frog, another own cousin, who couldn't climb at all, and wondered how it had all come about that one cousin could climb and be just as much at home in the trees as the birds, while the others couldn't climb at all.
He had it on his mind one morning when he met Old Mr. Toad solemnly hopping down the Lone Little Path. Right then and there Peter resolved to ask Old Mr. Toad. "Good morning, Mr. Toad," said Peter politely. "Have you a few minutes to spare?"
Old Mr. Toad hopped into the shade of a big mullein leaf. "I guess so, if it is anything important," said he. "Phew! Hot, isn't it? I simply can't stand the sun. Now what is that you've got on your mind, Peter?"
Peter hesitated a minute, for he wasn't at all sure that Old Mr. Toad would think the matter sufficiently important for him to spend his time in story telling. Then he blurted out the whole matter and how he had puzzled and puzzled why Sticky-toes was able to climb when none of the rest of the Toad family could. Old Mr. Toad chuckled.
"Looking for a story as usual, I see," said he. "You ought to go to Grandfather Frog for this one, because Sticky-toes is really a Frog and not a Toad. But we are all cousins, and I don't mind telling you about Sticky-toes, or rather about his great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather, who was the first of the family ever to climb a tree. You see, it is all in the family, and I am very proud of my family, which is one of the very oldest."
Peter settled himself comfortably and prepared to listen. Old Mr. Toad snapped up a foolish spider who came too near and then cleared his throat.
"Once on a time," he began, "when Old Mother Nature made the first land and the first trees and plants, the Toads and the Frogs were the first to leave the water to see what dry land was like. The Toads, being bolder than the Frogs, went all over the new land while the Frogs kept within jumping distance of the water, just as Grandfather Frog does to this day. There was one Frog, however, who, seeing how bravely and boldly the Toads went forth to see all that was to be seen in the new land, made up his mind that he too would see the Great World. He was the smallest of the Frogs, and his friends and relatives warned him not to go, saying that he would come to no good end.