You see, it seemed to
Peter as if Grandfather Frog had read his very thoughts.
"I--I didn't know you were waiting. Truly I didn't," stammered Peter.
"If I had, I would have been here long ago. If you please, how did you
know that I was coming and what I was coming for?"
"Never mind how I knew. I know a great deal that I don't tell, which
is more than some folks can say," replied Grandfather Frog.
Peter wondered if he meant him, for you know Peter is a great gossip.
But he didn't say anything, because he didn't know just what to say,
and in a minute Grandfather Frog began the story Peter so much wanted.
"Of course you know, without me telling you, that there is a reason
for Spotty's carrying his house around with him, because there is a
reason for everything in this world. And of course you know that that
reason is because of something that happened a long time ago, way back
in the days when the world was young. Almost everything to-day is the
result of things that happened in those long-ago days. The
great-great-ever-so-great grandfather of Spotty the Turtle lived
then, and unlike Spotty, whom you know, he had no house. He was very
quiet and bashful, was Mr. Turtle, and he never meddled with any one's
business, because he believed that the best way of keeping out of
trouble was to attend strictly to his own affairs.
"He was a good deal like Spotty, just as fond of the water and just as
slow moving, but he didn't have the house which Spotty has now.
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