one nice warm day, as bully no-tail, the frog boy, was hopping along through the woods, he felt so very happy that he whistled a little tune on a whistle he made from a willow stick. and the tune he whistled went like this, when you sing it:
“i am a little froggie boy,
without a bit of tail.
in fact i’m like a guinea pig,
who eats out of a pail.
”i swim, i hop, i flip, i flop,
i also sing a tune,
and some day i am going to try
to hop up to the moon.
“because you see the man up there
must very lonesome be,
without a little froggie boy,
like bawly or like me.”
“oh, ho! i wouldn’t try that if i were you,” suddenly exclaimed a voice.
“try what?” asked bully, before he thought.
“try to jump up to the moon,” went on the voice. “don’t you remember what happened to your brother bawly when he tried to jump over the church steeple? don’t do it, i beg of you.”
“oh, i wasn’t really going to jump to the moon,” went on bully. “i only put that in the song to make it sound nice. but who are you, if you please?” for the frog boy looked all around and he couldn’t see any one.
“here i am, over here,” the voice said, and then out from behind a clump of tall, waving cat-tail plants, that grew in a pond of water, there stepped a long-legged bird, with a long, sharp bill like a pencil or a penholder.
“oh ho! so it’s you, is it?” asked bully, making ready to hop away, for as soon as he saw that long-legged and sharp-billed bird, he knew right away that he was in danger. for the bird was a heron, which is something like a stork that lives on chimneys in a country called holland. and the heron bird eats frogs and mice and little animals like that.
“yes, it is i,” said the heron. “won’t you please sing that song on your whistle again, bully? i am very fond of music.” and, as he said that, the heron slyly took another step nearer to the frog boy, intending to grab him up in his sharp beak.
“i—i don’t believe i have time to sing another verse,” answered bully. “and anyhow, there aren’t any more verses. so i’ll be going,” and he hopped along, and hid under a stone where the big, big savage bird couldn’t get him.
oh, my! how angry the heron was when he saw that he couldn’t fool bully. he stamped his long legs on the ground and said all sorts of mean things, just because bully didn’t want to be eaten up.
“now i wonder how i’m going to get away from here without that bird biting me?” thought poor bully, after a while.
well, it did seem a hard thing to do, for the heron was there waiting for bully to come out, when he would jab his bill right through the frog boy. then bully thought and thought, which you must always do when you are in trouble, or have hard examples at school, and finally bully thought of a plan.
“i’ll hop along and go from one stone to another,” he said to himself, “and by hiding under the different rocks the heron can’t get me.”
so he tried that plan, hopping very quickly, and he got along all right, for every time the heron tried to stick the frog boy with his sharp bill, the bird would pick at a stone, under which bully was hidden, and that would make him more angry than ever. i mean it would make the heron angry, not bully.
well, the frog boy was almost home, and he knew that pretty soon the heron would have to turn back and run away, for the bird wouldn’t dare go right up to bully’s house. then, all of a sudden, bully saw a poor old mouse lady going along through the woods, with a basket of chips on her arm. she had picked them up where some men were cutting wood, and the mouse lady intended to put the chips in her kitchen stove, and boil the teakettle with them.
she walked along, when, all of a sudden, she stumbled on an acorn, and fell down, basket and all, and she hurt her paw on a thorn, so she couldn’t carry the basket any more.
“oh, that’s too bad!” exclaimed bully. “i must help the poor mouse lady.” so, forgetting all about the savage, long-billed bird, waiting to grab him, out from under a stone hopped bully, and he picked up the basket of chips for the poor mouse lady.
“oh, thank you kindly, little frog boy,” she said, and then the heron made a rush for bully and the mouse lady and tried to stick them both with his sharp beak.
“oh, quick! quick! hop in here with me!” exclaimed the mouse lady, as she pointed to a hole in a hollow stump, and into it she and bully went, basket of chips and all, just in time to escape the bad heron bird.
“oh, i’ll get you yet! i’ll get you yet!” screeched the bird, hopping along, first on one leg and then on the other, and dancing about in front of the stump. “i’ll eat you both, that’s what i will!” then he tried to reach in with his bill and pull the frog boy and the mouse lady out of the hollow stump, but he couldn’t, and then he stood on one leg and hid the other one up under his feathers to keep it warm.
“i’ll wait here until you come out, if i have to wait all night,” said the bird. “then i’ll get you.”
“i guess he will, too,” said bully, peeping out of a crack. “we are safe here, but how am i going to get home, and how are you going to get home, mrs. mouse?”
“i will show you,” she answered. “we’ll play a trick on that heron. see, i have some green paint, that i was going to put on my kitchen cupboard. now we’ll take some of it, and we’ll paint a few of the chips green, and they’ll look something like a frog. then we’ll throw them out to the heron, one at a time, and he’ll be so hungry that he’ll grab them without looking at them. when he eats enough green chips he’ll have indigestion, and be so heavy, like a stone, that he can’t chase after us when we go out.”
“good!” cried bully. so they painted some chips green, just the color of bully, and they tossed one out of the stump toward the bird.
“now i have you!” cried the heron, and, thinking it was the frog boy, he grabbed up that green chip as quick as anything. and, before he knew what it was, he had swallowed it, and then mrs. mouse and bully threw out more green chips, and the bad bird didn’t know they were only wood, but he thought they were a whole lot of green frogs hopping out, and he gobbled them up, one after another, as fast as he could.
and, in a little while, the sharp chips stuck out all over inside of him, like potatoes in a sack, and the heron had indigestion, and was so heavy that he couldn’t run. then bully and mrs. mouse came out of the stump, and went away, leaving the bad bird there, unable to move, and as angry as a fox without a tail. bully helped mrs. mouse carry the rest of the chips home, and then he hopped home himself.
now that’s the end of this story, but i know another, and if the little boy across the street doesn’t throw his baseball at my pussy cat and make her tail so big i can’t get her inside the house, i’ll tell you about bawly and his whistles.
