m to mind. He chuckled as if he thought it all a great
joke and repeated his invitation to Little Joe to come and get his fish.
But Little Joe just turned his back and went off down the Laughing Brook
in a great rage.

"It's too bad to waste such a fine fish," said Buster thoughtfully. "I
wonder what I'd better do with it." And while he was wondering, he ate
it all up. Then he started down the Laughing Brook to try to catch some
for himself.

II

LITTLE JOE OTTER GETS EVEN WITH BUSTER BEAR

Little Joe Otter was in a terrible rage. It was a bad beginning for a
beautiful day and Little Joe knew it. But who wouldn't be in a rage if
his breakfast was taken from him just as he was about to eat it? Anyway,
that is what Little Joe told Billy Mink. Perhaps he didn't tell it quite
exactly as it was, but you know he was very badly frightened at the
time.

"I was sitting on the bank of the Laughing Brook beside one of the
little pools," he told Billy Mink, "and was just going to eat a fat
trout I had caught, when who should come along but that great big
bully, Buster Bear. He took that fat trout away from me and ate it just
as if it belonged to him! I hate him! If I live long enough I'm going to
get even with him!"

Of course that wasn't nice talk and anything but a nice spirit, but
Little Joe Otter's temper is sometimes pretty short, especially when he
is hungry, and this time he had had no breakfast, you know.

Buster Bear hadn't actually taken the fish away from Little Joe. But
looking at the matter as Little Joe did, it amounted to the same thing.
You see, Buster knew perfectly well when he invited Little Joe to come
back and get it that Little Joe wouldn't dare do anything of the kind.

"Where is he now?" asked Billy Mink.

"He's somewhere up the Laughing Brook. I wish he'd fall in and get
drowned!" snapped Little Joe.

Billy Mink just had to laugh. The idea of great big Buster Bear getting
drowned in the Laughing Brook was too funny. There wasn't water enough
in it anywhere except down in the Smiling Pool, and that was on the
Green Meadows, where Buster had never been known to go. "Let's go see
what he is doing," said Billy Mink.

At first Little Joe didn't want to, but at last his curiosity got the
better of his fear, and he agreed. So the two little brown-coated scamps
turned down the Laughing Brook, taking the greatest care to keep out of
sight themselves. They had gone only a little way when Billy M