Finally Peter sighed, and it was
such a heavy sigh! Then very slowly he turned his back on the Smiling
Pool and started to hop away.
"Chug-a-rum!" said Grandfather Frog in his deepest, story-telling
voice. "A long time ago when the world was young, the
great-great-ever-so-great grandfather of Flitter the Bat first learned
to fly."
"I know!" cried Peter eagerly. "You told me about that, and it was a
splendid story."
"But when he learned to fly, he found that Old Mother Nature never
gives all her blessings to any single one of her little people,"
continued Grandfather Frog, without paying the least attention to
Peter's interruption. "Old Mr. Bat had wings; something no other
animal had, but he found that he could no longer run and jump. He
could just flop about on the ground, and was almost helpless. Of
course that meant that he could very easily be caught, and so the
ground was no longer a safe place for him. But he soon found that he
was not safe in the air in daytime. Old Mr. Hawk could fly even faster
than he, and Mr. Hawk was always watching for him. At first, Mr. Bat
didn't know what to do. He didn't like to go to Old Mother Nature and
complain that his new wings were not all that he had thought they
would be. That would look as if he were ungrateful for her kindness
in giving him the wings.
"'I've got to think of some way out of my troubles myself,' thought
old Mr. Bat. 'When I'm sure that I can't, it will be time enough to go
to Old Mother Nature.
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