“Look!” she cried eagerly.
She was pointing excitedly to a hole beside the roots of a fresh, green canna plant.
“That hole again,” said her father. “There’s a stone in it now, isn’t there?”
“No, that’s what I thought; stoop down and look close, papa!” cried Chuckie Wuckie.
It was the head of a fat hop-toad, but all that could be seen was its mouth and bright eyes. It was staring at them. Papa poked it with the point of his umbrella. It scrambled deeper into the hole, until there was nothing to be seen but the dirt. It was slowly changing to the color of the black earth.
“I watched him,” cried Chuckie Wuckie, excitedly—“oh, for an hour! When I found him he was just hopping on the canna-bed. He was looking for his house. He acted as if the door had been shut in his face. Then he began to open it. He crawled and scrambled round and round, and threw up the dirt, and poked and pushed. At last he had the hole made, just as it is every morning, and he crawled in. Then he lay and blinked at me.”
“Clever fellow,” said papa. “Well, we won’t grudge him a home, and we won’t shut the door again in his face, will we, Chuckie Wuckie?”
The cannas have grown very tall now—almost as tall as Chuckie Wuckie’s papa—and so thick that you cannot see where the roots are; but a fat, brown hop-toad has a snug, cool, safe little nest there, and he gratefully crawls into it when the sun grows very hot.