The trap did not come up at once. He pulled and
pulled, and then suddenly up it came, all covered with mud. In it
was one little claw from Little Joe Otter. Very carefully Farmer
Brown's boy set the trap again. If he could have looked over in the
bulrushes and have seen Little Joe Otter and Billy Mink and Jerry
Muskrat watching him and tickling and laughing, he would not have
been so sure that next time he would catch Little Joe Otter.
All around the Smiling Pool and then up and down the Laughing Brook
Farmer Brown's boy tramped, and each trap he found sprung and buried
in the mud. He had stopped whistling by this time, and there was a
puzzled frown on his freckled face. What did it mean? Could some
other boy have found all his traps and played a trick by springing
all of them? The more he thought about it, the more puzzled he
became. You see, he did not know anything about the busy day the
Minks and the Otters and the Muskrats and the Coons had spent the
day before.
Old Grandfather Frog, sitting on his big green lily-pad, smoothed
down his white and yellow waistcoat and winked up at jolly, round,
red Mr.
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