d Buster Bear, and still chuckling,
he went off to think up a plan to get the best of Little Joe Otter.

IV

LITTLE JOE OTTER SUPPLIES BUSTER BEAR WITH A BREAKFAST

Getting even just for spite
Doesn't always pay.
Fact is, it is very apt
To work the other way.

That is just how it came about that Little Joe Otter furnished Buster
Bear with the best breakfast he had had for a long time. He didn't mean
to do it. Oh, my, no! The truth is, he thought all the time that he was
preventing Buster Bear from getting a breakfast. You see he wasn't well
enough acquainted with Buster to know that Buster is quite as smart as
he is, and perhaps a little bit smarter. Spite and selfishness were at
the bottom of it. You see Little Joe and Billy Mink had had all the
fishing in the Laughing Brook to themselves so long that they thought no
one else had any right to fish there. To be sure Bobby Coon caught a few
little fish there, but they didn't mind Bobby. Farmer Brown's boy fished
there too, sometimes, and this always made Little Joe and Billy Mink
very angry, but they were so afraid of him that they didn't dare do
anything about it. But when they discovered that Buster Bear was a
fisherman, they made up their minds that something had got to be done.
At least, Little Joe did.

"He'll try it again to-morrow morning," said Little Joe. "I'll keep
watch, and as soon as I see him coming, I'll drive out all the fish,
just as I did to-day. I guess that'll teach him to let our fish alone."

So the next morning Little Joe hid before daylight close by the little
pool where Buster Bear had given him such a fright. Sure enough, just as
the Jolly Sunbeams began to creep through the Green Forest, he saw
Buster Bear coming straight over to the little pool. Little Joe slipped
into the water and chased all the fish out of the little pool, and
stirred up the mud on the bottom so that the water was so muddy that the
bottom couldn't be seen at all. Then he hurried down to the next little
pool and did the same thing.

Now Buster Bear is very smart. You know he had guessed the day before
who had spoiled his fishing. So this morning he only went far enough to
make sure that if Little Joe were watching for him, as he was sure he
would be, he would see him coming. Then, instead of keeping on to the
little pool, he hurried to a place way down the Laughing Brook, where
the water was very shallow, hardly over his feet, and there he sat
c