Of course he meant that Peter’s effort to keep still was very good, but Peter didn’t know this, and he couldn’t imagine what Grandfather Frog meant.  However, what he cared most about was the story, so he settled himself to listen, his long ears standing straight up, and his eyes stretched wide open as he watched Grandfather Frog.  The latter cleared his throat two or three times, each time as if he intended to begin right then.  It was one of Grandfather Frog’s little jokes.  He did it just to tease Peter.  At last he really did begin, and the very first thing he did was to ask Peter a question.

“What is the reason that you stay in the dear Old Briar-patch when Reddy Fox is around?”

“So that he won’t catch me, of course,” replied Peter.

“Very good,” said Grandfather Frog.  “Now, why do you go over to the sweet-clover patch every day?”

“Why, because there is plenty to eat there,” replied Peter, looking very, very much puzzled.

“Well, now you’ve answered your own question,” grunted Grandfather Frog.  “Flitter flies at night because he is safest then, and because he can find plenty to eat.”

“Oh,” said Peter, and his voice sounded dreadfully disappointed.  He had found out what he had wanted to know, but he hadn’t had a story.  He fidgeted about and looked very hard at Grandfather Frog, but the latter seemed to think that he had told Peter what he wanted to know, and that was all there was to it.  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.’