STORY II

BRIGHTEYES AND MRS. HOPTOAD

After Buddy³ had taken that funny ride down hill, inside the head of cabbage, his father said to him:

"Buddy, come here, and let me look at you. Possibly you were hurt in that terrible trip, and, having been in a hospital, I can tell whether you were or not."

So he looked Buddy over carefully, but there wasn't a thing the matter with the little chap, except a tiny scratch on his nose.

"Weren't you awfully⁴ frightened?" asked Brighteyes of her brother. "It was terrible!"

"No," he answered, "not much. And it wasn't so terrible when we got a good dinner out of it. I wish I could find a cabbage every day."

"You had better put something on that scratch," cautioned Dr. Pigg. Then he went on reading his paper, and Mrs. Pigg got out the salve bottle for Buddy.

Well, it was two days after this that Brighteyes Pigg was out walking along the road. She had been to the store for some carrots, and the store man said he would send them right over, so the little girl guinea pig didn't have to carry them.

Well, she was walking along, not thinking of much of anything in particular, when suddenly something hopped⁵ out of the bushes in front of her.

"My goodness! What's that?" cried Brighteyes, for she was a bit nervous from having had a tooth pulled week before last.

"Don't be alarmed, my dear," spoke⁶ a soft voice. "It's only me," and if there wasn't a great, big, motherly-looking hoptoad, out in the dusty road, and the next moment if that toad² didn't begin hopping⁷ up and down as fast as she could hop¹.

"Why, whatever in the world are you doing?" asked Brighteyes Pigg, for she noticed that the toad didn't seem to get anywhere; only hopping up and down in the same place all the while.

"I'm jumping, my dear," answered the toad.

"So I see," remarked the little guinea pig girl, "but where are you jumping to? You don't seem to be getting any place in particular."

"And I don't want to, my dear," went on the toad, and she never stopped going up and down as fast as she could go. "I'm churning butter," she went on, "and when one churns butter one must jump up and down you know. That's the way to make butter. Don't your folks churn?" and then, for the first time, Brighteyes noticed that the toad had a little wooden churn, made from an old clothespin, fastened on her back.

"No, my mother doesn't churn," answered Brighteyes.

"Then I don't suppose you keep a cow," went on Mrs. Toad. "Neither do we, but next door to us is the loveliest milk-weed you ever saw, and I thought it a shame to see all the milk juice go to waste, so I churn it every week. It makes very fine butter."

"I should think it might," answered Brighteyes. "But isn't it hard work?"

"Yes, it is," replied Mrs. Toad, "and I know you'll excuse me, my dear, for not stopping my jumping to sit and chat with you, but the truth of the matter is that I think the butter is beginning to come, and I daren't stop."

"Oh, don't stop on my account," begged Brighteyes, politely. "I can talk while you jump."

"Very good," replied the toad, "I think I will soon be finished, though on hot days the butter is longer in coming," and she began to hop up and down faster than ever.

Then, all at once, oh, about as soon as you can pull off a porous⁸ plaster when you're quick about it, if poor Mrs. Toad didn't give a cry, and stop jumping.

"What's the matter?" asked Brighteyes, "has the butter come?"

"No," was the answer, "but I stepped on a sharp stone, and hurt my foot, and now I can't jump up and down any more. Oh, dear! now the butter will be spoiled, for there is no one else at my home to finish churning it. Oh, dear me, and a pinch of salt on a cracker⁹! Isn't that bad luck?" and she sat down beside a burdock plant.

Well, sure enough, she had cut her foot quite badly, and it was utterly¹⁰ out of the question for her to jump up and down any more.

"Will you kindly¹¹ help me to get the churn off my back?" Mrs. Toad asked of Brighteyes, and the little guinea pig girl helped her.

"All that nice butter is spoiled," went on Mrs. Toad, as she looked in the churn. "Well, it can't be helped, I s'pose, and there's no use worrying over buttermilk that isn't quite made. I shall have to throw this away."

"No, don't," cried Brighteyes quickly.

"Why not?" asked the toad lady.

"Because I will finish churning it for you."

"Do you know how to churn?"

"Not exactly, but I have thought of a plan. See, we will tie the churn to this blackberry bush stem, and then I will take hold of one end of the stem, and wiggle it up and down, and the churn will go up and down, too, on the bush, just as it did when you jumped with it; and then maybe the butter will come."

"All right, my dear, you may try it," agreed Mrs. Toad. "I'm afraid, though, that it won't amount to anything, but it can do no harm. I am sure it is very kind of you to think of it."

So Brighteyes took the churn, and tied it to a low, overhanging branch of the blackberry bush. Then she took hold of the branch in her teeth, and stood up on her hind¹² legs and began to wiggle it up and down. The churn went up and down with the branch, and the milk from the milk-weed sloshed and splashed around inside the churn, and land sakes flopsy-dub and some chewing gum, if in about two squeals¹³ there wasn't the nicest butter a guinea pig or a toad would ever want to eat!

"Oh, what a smart little girl you are!" cried Mrs. Toad. "I'm sure your mother must be proud of you! Now I can work the buttermilk out, and salt the butter, and I'm going to send your mamma home a nice pat," which she did, and very glad Mrs. Pigg was to get it.

"You certainly are a clever little child," said Dr. Pigg to Brighteyes that night, "but then, you see, you take after your father. It is my hospital training that shows. By the way, we must send something to Mrs. Toad, for her cut foot," which they did, and it got all better.

Now, in case you don't drop your bread with the butter side down on the carpet, and spoil the kitchen oilcloth, I'll tell you in the next story about Buddy Pigg and Sammie Littletail.