“Ha! Hum!” exclaimed Grandpa Croaker. “I’m afraid I don’t know any giant stories, but I’ll tell you one about how I once went hunting and was nearly caught myself.”

 

“Oh, that will be fine!” cried the two frog boys, so their Grandpa took one of them up on each knee, and in his deepest, bass², rumbling³, stumbling, bumbling voice he told them the story.

 

It was a very good story, and some day perhaps I may tell it to you. It was about how, when Grandpa was a young frog, he started out to hunt blackberries, and got caught in a briar bush and couldn’t get loose for ever so long, and the mosquitoes bit him very hard, all over.

“And after that I never went hunting blackberries without taking a mosquito netting along,” said the old frog gentleman, as he finished his story.

 

“My but that was an adventure!” cried Bully.

 

“That’s what!” agreed his brother. “You were very brave, Grandpa, to go off hunting blackberries all alone.”

 

“Yes, I was considered quite brave and handsome when I was young,” admitted the old gentleman frog, in his bass voice. “But now, boys, run off to bed, and I’ll finish reading the paper.”

 

The next morning when Bully got up he saw Bawly at the side of the bed, putting some beans in a bag, and taking his bean shooter out from the bureau drawer where he kept it.

 

“What are you going to do, Bawly?” asked Bully.

 

“I’m going hunting, as Grandpa did,” said his brother.

 

“But blackberries aren’t ripe yet. They’re not ripe until June or July,” objected Bully.

 

“I know it, but I’m going to hunt mosquitoes, not blackberries. I’m going to kill all I can with my bean shooter, and then there won’t be so many to bite the dear little babies this summer. Don’t you want to come along?” asked Bawly.

 

“I would if I had a bean shooter,” answered Bully. “Perhaps I’ll go some other time. To-day I promised Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow I’d come over and play ball with them.”

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