Then he went back to the wishing-stone and looked down at it thoughtfully. “And I actually wished I could be a fox!” he exclaimed. “My, but I’m glad I’m not! I guess Reddy has trouble enough without me making him any more. He may kill a lot of innocent little creatures, but he has to live, and it’s no more than men do.” (He was thinking of the chicken dinner he would have that day.) “I’m going straight over to the Old Pasture and take up that trap I set yesterday. I guess a boy’s troubles don’t amount to much after all. I’m more glad than ever that I’m a boy, and—and—well, if Reddy Fox is smart enough to get one of my chickens now and then, he’s welcome. It must be awful to be hungry all the time.”
CHAPTER TWO
TOMMY BECOMES A FURRY ENGINEER
Paddy the Beaver lives in the Great Woods far from the dwelling-place of man. Often and often had Tommy wished that Paddy lived in the Green Forest near his home that he might make his acquaintance; for he had read many wonderful things about Paddy, and they were hard to believe.
“If I could see ’em for myself, just see ’em with my own eyes I could believe; but so many things are written that are not true that a feller doesn’t know what to believe and what not to. A feller ought to see things to know that they are so,” said Tommy, as he strolled down towards the big gray stone that overlooked the Green Meadows.
“’Course it’s easy enough to believe that beavers build houses. Muskrats do that. I know all about muskrats, and I s’pose a beaver’s house is about the same thing as a muskrat’s, only bigger and better; but how any animal can cut down a big tree, or build a dam, or dig a regular canal is more than I can understand without seeing for myself. I wish——”
Tommy didn’t finish his wish. I suspect he was going to wish that he could go into the Great Woods and hunt for Paddy the Beaver. But he didn’t finish his wish, because just then a new thought popped into his head. You know how it is with thoughts. They just pop out from nowhere in the queerest way. It was so now with Tommy. He suddenly thought of the wishing-stone, the great gray stone just ahead of him, and he wondered, if he should sit down on it, if he could wish himself into a beaver. Always before, when he had wished himself into an animal or a bird, it was one of those with which he was familiar and had seen. This case was different. There were no beavers anywhere near where Tommy lived, and so he was a little doubtful. If he could wish himself into a beaver, why, he could wish himself into anything—a lion, or an elephant, or anything else—and learn about all the animals, no matter where they lived!
“Gee!” exclaimed Tommy, and there was a queer little catch in his breath, because, you know, it was such a big idea. He stood still and slowly rubbed the bare toes of one foot up and down the other bare brown leg. “Gee!” he exclaimed again, and stared very hard at the wishing-stone. “’Twon’t do any harm to try it, anyway,” he added.
So he walked over to the wishing-stone and sat down. With his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees he stared over at the Green Forest and tried to imagine that it was the Great Woods, where the only human beings ever seen were hunters, or trappers, or lumbermen, and where bears, and deer, and moose, and wolves lived, and where beavers built their homes, and made their ponds, and lived their lives far from the homes of men. As he stared, the Green Forest seemed to change to the Great Woods. “I wish,” said he, slowly and dreamily, “I wish that I were a beaver.”
He was no longer sitting on the wishing-stone. He was a young beaver with a waterproof fur coat, a broad flat tail and great chisel-like teeth in the front of his jaws, his tools. His home was in the heart of the Great Woods, where a broad, shallow brook sparkled and dimpled, and the sun, breaking through the tree-tops, kissed its ripples. In places it flowed swiftly, dancing and singing over stones and pebbles. Again it lingered in deep dark cool holes where the trout lay. Farther on, it loafed lazily through wild meadows where the deer delighted to come. But where Tommy was, it rested in little ponds, quiet, peaceful, in a dreamy stillness, where the very spirit of peace and happiness and contentment seemed to brood.