Chapter 23 - Page 2

that I simply couldn't dispute one of my elders. And anyhow, Mr. Turtle, you'd find that our singing sounded twice as well if you were half a mile away."

"It certainly couldn't sound any worse than it does here," Timothy Turtle declared--a remark which made the Frog family grin broadly.

He said no more, but slipped into the water and struck out towards home.

There was a lively scattering of those who found themselves in Timothy Turtle's path. And for a time it looked as if the singing party had broken up in disorder.

But after a while everybody came back again--that is, everybody but Timothy Turtle. He hurried away and spent most of the whole night buried in the mud at the bottom of Black Creek. For even until daybreak that merry song came floating now and then across Pleasant Valley.

And Timothy Turtle did not like it. He thought it not only loud and long, but most unpleasant as well.

THE END.

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