Chapter 17 - Page 2

his head.

"I hope you don't want a pair of antlers to fasten over your chimney piece!" Nimble exclaimed. "I shouldn't care to part with my antlers--not just at present!"

"No!" Brownie said once more.

"I'm glad of that," Nimble replied. For a moment he had been worried.

And then Brownie Beaver told him what he had in mind: "I need a flag to fly over my house."

"That would be fine," Nimble observed. "But I don't see how I could help you with that."

"I've heard that you have a flag. I thought perhaps you'd let me have it--or borrow it, at least," Brownie Beaver told him.

Nimble Deer looked puzzled.

"I haven't any flag," he said. And then he cried, "Yes! Yes, I have one!"

"Ah! I was told you had," said Brownie Beaver.

"Who told you?"

"Old Mr. Crow!" Brownie Beaver said.

"I might have known it," Nimble muttered. "He has played a joke on you. It's true that I have a flag; but it's not the kind of flag you want. Some people call my tail a flag, on account of the way I wave it in the air when I'm startled. Of course you wouldn't care to have my tail on the top of your house."

And Brownie Beaver admitted that he shouldn't.

"But I can't help being disappointed," he confessed.