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