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At last Jerry could stand it no longer. He just had to see what was going on. He slipped into the water and swam over to where the water was muddiest. Just as he got there up came Paddy.

“Hello, Cousin Jerry!” said he. “I was just going to invite you over to see what you think of my house inside. Just follow me.”

Paddy dived, and Jerry dived after him. He followed Paddy in at one of the three doorways under water and up a smooth hall right into the biggest, nicest bedroom Jerry had ever seen in all his life. He just gasped in sheer surprise. He couldn’t do anything else. He couldn’t find his tongue to say a word. Here he was in this splendid great room up above the water, and he had been so sure that there wasn’t any room at all! He just didn’t know what to make of it.

Paddy’s eyes twinkled. “Well,” said he, “what do you think of it?”

“I–I–think it is splendid, just perfectly splendid! But I don’t understand it at all, Cousin Paddy. I–I–Where is that great pile of mud I helped you build in the middle?” Jerry looked as foolish as he felt when he asked this.

“Why, I’ve dug it all away. That’s what made the water so muddy,” replied Paddy.

“But what did you build it for in the first place?” Jerry asked.

“Because I had to have something solid to rest my sticks against while I was building my walls, of course,” replied Paddy. When I got the tops fastened together for a roof, they didn’t need a support any longer, and then I dug it away to make this room. I couldn’t have built such a big room any other way. I see you don’t know very much about house-building, Cousin Jerry.”

“I–I’m afraid I don’t,” confessed Jerry sadly.

CHAPTER XIII. The Queer Storehouse.

Everybody knew that Paddy the Beaver was laying up a supply of food for the winter, and everybody thought it was queer food. That is, everybody but Prickly Porky the Porcupine thought so. Prickly Porky likes the same kind of food, but he never lays up a supply. He just goes out and gets it when he wants it, winter or summer. What kind of food was it? Why, bark, to be sure. Yes, Sir, it was just bark–the bark of certain kinds of trees.

Now Prickly Porky can climb the trees and eat the bark right there, but Paddy the Beaver cannot climb, and if he would just eat the bark that he can reach from the ground, it would take such a lot of trees to keep him filled up that he would soon spoil the Green Forest. You know, when the bark is taken off a tree all the way around, the tree dies. That is because all the things that a tree draws out of the ground to make it grow and keep it alive are carried up from the roots in the sap, and the sap cannot go up the tree trunks and into the branches when the bark is taken off, because it is up the inside of the bark that it travels. So when the bark is taken from a tree all the way around the trunk, the tree just starves to death.

Now Paddy the Beaver loves the Green Forest as dearly as you and I do, and perhaps even a little more dearly. You see, it is his home. Besides, Paddy never is wasteful. So he cuts down a tree so that he can get all the bark instead of killing a whole lot of trees for a very little bark, as he might do if he were lazy. There isn’t a lazy bone in him–not one. The bark he likes best is from the aspen. When he cannot get that, he will eat the bark from the poplar, the alder, the willow, and even the birch. But he likes the aspen so much better that he will work very hard to get it. Perhaps it tastes better because he does have to work so hard for it.