The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad

A SHADOW PASSES OVER THE SMILING POOL

  Here’s what Mr. Toad says;
    Heed it well, my dear: 
  “Time to watch for clouds is
   When the sky is clear.”

He says that that is the reason that he lives to a good old age, does Old Mr. Toad.  I suppose he means that when the sky is cloudy, everybody is looking for rain and is prepared for it, but when the sun is shining, most people forget that there is such a thing as a storm, so when it comes suddenly very few are prepared for it.  It is the same way with danger and trouble.  So Old Mr. Toad very wisely watches out when there seems to be the least need of it, and he finds it always pays.

It was a beautiful spring evening.  Over back of the Purple Hills to which Old Mother West Wind had taken her children, the Merry Little Breezes, and behind which jolly, round, red Mr. Sun had gone to bed, there was still a faint, clear light.  But over the Green Meadows and the Smiling Pool the shadows had drawn a curtain of soft dusk which in the Green Forest became black.  The little stars looked down from the sky and twinkled just to see their reflections twinkle back at them from the Smiling Pool.  And there and all around it was perfect peace.  Jerry Muskrat swam back and forth, making little silver lines on the surface of the Smiling Pool and squeaking contentedly, for it was the hour which he loves best.  Little Friend the Song Sparrow had tucked his head under his wing and gone to sleep among the alders along the Laughing Brook and Redwing the Blackbird had done the same thing among the bulrushes.  All the feathered songsters who had made joyous the bright day had gone to bed.

But this did not mean that the glad spring chorus was silent.  Oh, my, no!  No indeed!  The Green Meadows were silent, and the Green Forest was silent, but as if to make up for this, the sweet singers of the Smiling Pool, the hylas and the frogs and Old Mr. Toad, were pouring out their gladness as if they had not been singing most of the departed day.  You see it was the hour they love best of all, the hour which seems to them just made for singing, and they were doing their best to tell Old Mother Nature how they love her, and how glad they were that she had brought back sweet Mistress Spring to waken them from their long sleep.

It was so peaceful and beautiful there that it didn’t seem possible that danger of any kind could be lurking near.  But Old Mr. Toad, swelling out that queer music bag in his throat and singing with all his might, never once forgot that wise saying of his, and so he was the first to see what looked like nothing so much as a little detached bit of the blackness of the Green Forest floating out towards the Smiling Pool.  Instantly he stopped singing.  Now that was a signal.  When he stopped singing, his nearest neighbor stopped singing, then the next one and the next, and in a minute there wasn’t a sound from the Smiling Pool save the squeak of Jerry Muskrat hidden among the bulrushes.  That great chorus stopped as abruptly as the electric lights go out when you press a button.

Back and forth over the Smiling Pool, this way and that way, floated the shadow, but there was no sign of any living thing in the Smiling Pool.  After awhile the shadow floated away over the Green Meadows without a sound.

“Hooty the Owl didn’t get one of us that time,” said Old Mr. Toad to his nearest neighbor with a chuckle of satisfaction.  Then he swelled out his music bag and began to sing again.  And at once, as abruptly as it had stopped, the great chorus began again as joyous as before, for nothing had happened to bring sadness as might have but for the watchfulness of Old Mr. Toad.