r Rabbit!" he snarled. "You'll find it out one of these fine
days!"

"Reddy, Reddy, smart and sly,
Couldn't catch a buzzing fly!"

taunted Peter.

"Chug-a-rum!" said Grandfather Frog in his deepest, gruffest voice. "We
know all about that. What we want to know is what Little Joe Otter has
got on his mind."

"It's news--great news!" cried Little Joe.

"We can tell better how great it is when we hear what it is," replied
Grandfather Frog testily. "What is it?"

Little Joe Otter looked around at all the eager faces watching him, and
then in the slowest, most provoking way, he drawled: "Farmer Brown's boy
is afraid of Buster Bear."

For a minute no one said a word. Then Blacky the Crow leaned down from
his perch in the Big Hickory-tree and looked very hard at Little Joe as
he said:

"I don't believe it. I don't believe a word of it. Farmer Brown's boy
isn't afraid of any one who lives in the Green Forest or on the Green
Meadows or in the Smiling Pool, and you know it. We are all afraid of
him."

Little Joe glared back at Blacky. "I don't care whether you believe it
or not; it's true," he retorted. Then he told how early that very
morning he and Buster Bear had been fishing together in the Laughing
Brook, and how Farmer Brown's boy had been fishing there too, and hadn't
caught a single trout because they had all been caught or frightened
before he got there. Then he told how Farmer Brown's boy had found a
footprint of Buster Bear in the soft mud, and how he had stopped fishing
right away and started for home, looking behind him with fear in his
eyes all the way.

"Now tell me that he isn't afraid!" concluded Little Joe. "For once he
knows just how we feel when he comes prowling around where we are. Isn't
that great news? Now we'll get even with _him_!"

"I'll believe it when I see it for myself!" snapped Blacky the Crow.

X

BUSTER BEAR BECOMES A HERO

The news that Little Joe Otter told at the Smiling Pool,--how Farmer
Brown's boy had run away from Buster Bear without even seeing him,--soon
spread all over the Green Meadows and through the Green Forest, until
every one who lives there knew about it. Of course, Peter Rabbit helped
spread it. Trust Peter for that! But everybody else helped too. You see,
they had all been afraid of Farmer Brown's boy for so long that they
were tickled almost to pieces at the very thought of having some one in
the Green Forest who could make Farmer Brown's boy fe