After he heard that, Peter felt better.  But he didn’t lose interest in tails, and he spent a great deal of time in wondering why some of his neighbors had big, bushy tails and some had long, slim tails and why he himself had almost no tail at all.  So when Paddy the Beaver came to live in the Green Forest, and made a pond there by building a wonderful dam across the Laughing Brook, the first thing Peter looked to see was what kind of a tail Paddy has, and the first time he got a good look at it, his eyes popped almost out of his head.  He just stared and stared.  He hardly noticed the wonderful dam or the equally wonderful canals which Paddy had made.  All he could think of was that great, broad, flat, thick tail, which is so unlike any tail he had ever seen or heard of.

The very next morning he hurried over to the Smiling Pool to tell Grandfather Frog about it.  Grandfather Frog’s big, goggly eyes twinkled.

“Chug-a-rum!” said he.  “Paddy the Beaver has one of the most useful tails I know of.  Would you like to know how he comes by such a queer tail?”

[Illustration:  The first thing Peter looked to see was what kind of a tail Paddy has.]

“Oh, if you please!  If you please, Grandfather Frog!  I didn’t suppose there was such a queer tail in all the world, and I don’t see what possible use it can be.  Do tell me about it!” cried Peter.

“Chug-a-rum!  If you had used your eyes when you visited Paddy, you might have guessed for yourself how he came by it,” replied Grandfather Frog gruffly.  “Some people never do learn to use their eyes.”

Peter looked a bit sheepish, but he said nothing and waited patiently.  Presently Grandfather Frog cleared his throat two or three times and began to talk.

“Once upon a time, long, long ago, when the world was young—­”

“It seems to me that everything wonderful happened long ago when the world was young,” interrupted Peter.

Grandfather Frog looked at Peter severely, and Peter hastened to beg his pardon.

After a long time Grandfather Frog began again.

“Once on a time, long, long ago, lived Mr. Beaver, the great-great-ever-so-great grandfather of Paddy up there in the Green Forest.  Old Mr. Beaver was one of the hardest working of all of Old Mother Nature’s big family and one of the smartest, just as Paddy is to-day.  He always seemed happiest when he was busiest, and because he liked to be happy all the time, he tried to keep busy all the time.

“He was very thrifty, was Mr. Beaver; not at all like some people I know.  He believed in preparing to-day for what might happen to-morrow, and so when he had all the food he needed for the present, he stored away food for the time when it might not be so easy to get.  And he believed in helping himself, did Mr. Beaver, and not in leaving everything to Old Mother Nature, as did most of his neighbors.  That is how he first came to think of making a dam and a pond.  Like his small cousin, Mr. Muskrat, he was very fond of the water, and felt most at home and safest there.  But he found that sometimes the food which he liked best, which was the bark of certain kinds of trees, grew some distance from the water, and it was the hardest kind of hard work to roll and drag the logs down to the water, where he could eat the bark from them in safety.