He caught three or four beetles and[170] near the Laughing Brook surprised a young frog.
And because it was quite dark and because he was trying to look behind him, instead of watching where he was going, he pitched heels over head down the bank of the Laughing Brook, splash into a little pool where Billy Mink was fishing.
He had seen them[142] start off toward the Laughing Brook and though he wouldn't own up to it, even to himself, he wished that he was with them.
[140]So while Woof-Woof went over to the Laughing Brook with Mother Bear, under the great windfall Boxer lay and sulked and tried to think of some way of getting even with Mother Bear and Woof-Woof.
The Laughing Brook was the only water they were acquainted with, and in that part of the Green Forest it was narrow and the pools were very small.
Then one day as they were playing about near the Laughing Brook, while Mother Bear was busy a little way off tearing open an old stump after ants, Woof-Woof discovered a footprint.
The twins had played until they were tired and then had curled up for a nap in a sunny spot while their mother went fishing in the Laughing Brook.
" she cried as she danced along the brook path.
"Fell into the brook when I was watering the cows.
So I let her and she kept it on till the afternoon recess and then she came and told me she had lost it in the brook.
When she reached the bank of the little creek where Lofty John's brook ran into Blair Water, she heard piteous shrieks; and there, marooned on a tiny islet of sere marsh grass in the creek, was an unhappy little beast, its soaking fur plastered against its sides, shivering and trembling in the wind of the sharp autumnal day.
The To-day Road is by the brook and we call it that because it is135 lovely now.
When she reached the ground she bolted through the balm-of-gileads and over the fence into Lofty John's bush, nor did she stop running till she reached the path by the brook.
She wished the path might go on forever, but presently it veered away from the brook, and when she had scrambled over a mossy, old board fence she found herself in the "front-garden" of New Moon, where Cousin Jimmy was pruning some spirea bushes.
The dear little sunny brook, her chief companion after John, was sorry company at this season.
No one guessed the quiet pleasure that lay hidden in her heart when she watched the girl's dark head bent over her lessons at night, nor dreamed of her joy in, certain quiet evenings when Miranda went to prayer meeting; evenings when Rebecca would read aloud Hiawatha or Barbara Frietchie, The Bugle Song, or The Brook.
She descended a little hill, jumped from stone to stone across a woodland brook, startling the drowsy frogs, who were always winking and blinking in the morning sun.
"I s'pose there's a brook somewheres near it," he said timorously.
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.
From over in the Green Meadows rose the clear lilt of Carol the Meadow Lark, and among the alders just where the Laughing Brook ran into the Smiling Pool a flood of happiness was pouring from the throat of Little Friend the Song Sparrow.
