Then Jerry would reply: 

    “Two eyes you have, bright as can be;
     Perhaps some day you’ll learn to see.”

Then Johnny Chuck would sit as still as ever he knew how, and watch and watch the Smiling Pool, but not a bird did he see in the water, though the singers were still there.  One day a sudden thought popped into his head.  Perhaps those singers were not birds at all!  Why hadn’t he thought of that before?  Perhaps it was because he was looking so hard for birds that he hadn’t seen anything else.  Johnny began to look, not for anything in particular, but to see everything that he could.

Almost right away he saw some tiny little dark spots on the water.  They didn’t look like much of anything.  They were so small that he hadn’t noticed them before.  One of them was quite close to him, and as Johnny Chuck looked at it, it began to look like a tiny nose, and then—­why, just then, Johnny was very sure that one of those singing voices came right from that very spot!

He was so surprised that he hopped to his feet and excitedly beckoned to Jerry Muskrat.  The instant he did that, the voices near him stopped singing, and the little spots on the water disappeared, leaving just the tiniest of little rings, just such tiny little rings as drops of rain falling on the Smiling Pool would make.  And when that tiny spot nearest to him that looked like a tiny nose disappeared, Johnny Chuck caught just a glimpse of a little form under the water.

“Why—­why-e-e!  The singers are Grandfather Frog’s children!” cried Johnny Chuck.

“No, they’re not, but they are own cousins to them; they are the grandchildren of old Mr. Tree Toad! and they are called Hylas!” said Jerry Muskrat, laughing and rubbing his hands in great glee.  “I told you that if you used your eyes, you’d learn to see.”

“My, but they’ve got voices bigger than they are!” said Johnny Chuck, as he started home across the Green Meadows.  “I’m glad I know who the singers of the Smiling Pool are, and I mustn’t forget their name—­ Hylas.  What a funny name!” But Farmer Brown’s boy, listening to their song that evening, didn’t call them Hylas.  He said:  “Hear the peepers!  Spring is surely here.”

V

JOHNNY CHUCK BECOMES DISSATISFIED

Johnny Chuck was unhappy.  Here it was the glad springtime, when everybody is supposed to be the very happiest, and Johnny Chuck was unhappy.  Why was he unhappy?  Well, he hardly knew himself.  He had slept comfortably all the long winter.  He had awakened very, very hungry, but now he had plenty to eat.  All about him the birds were singing or busily at work building new homes.  And still Johnny Chuck felt unhappy.  It was dreadful to feel this way and not have any good reason for it.