So she began to study how she could
help Mr. Turtle. One day she came up behind him just as he sat down to
rest. The piece of bark was uncomfortable and scratched his back, 'I
wish,' said he, talking to himself, for he didn't know that any one
else was near, 'I wish that I had a house of my own that I could carry
on my back all the time and be perfectly safe when I was inside of
it.'
"'You shall have,' said Old Mother Nature, and reaching out, she
touched his back and turned the skin into hard shell. Then she touched
the skin of his stomach and turned that into hard shell. 'Now draw in
your head and your legs and your tail,' said she.
"Mr. Turtle did as he was told to do, and there he was in the very
best and safest kind of a house, perfectly hidden from all his
enemies!
"'Oh, Mother Nature, how can I ever thank you?' he cried.
"'By doing as you always have done, attending wholly to your own
affairs,' replied Old Mother Nature.
"So ever since that long-ago day when the world was young, all Turtles
have carried their houses with them and never have meddled in things
that don't concern them," concluded Grandfather Frog.
"Oh, thank you, Grandfather Frog," exclaimed Peter, drawing a long
breath. "That was a perfectly splendid thing for Old Mother Nature to
do."
Then he started for his own home in the dear Old Briar-patch, and all
the way there he wondered and wondered how Grandfather Frog knew that
he wanted that story, and to this day he hasn't found out.
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