Brownie Beaver gave Jasper a quick look.
“I’ve often suspected,” he said,
“that you don’t always tell me the truth.
And now I know it. I’ve never been to the
photographer’s in my life. So how could
he have my picture, I should like to know?”
“But you don’t have to go to the photographer’s
to have your picture taken,” Jasper Jay retorted.
“Why couldn’t the photographer come to
you?”
“I suppose he could,” Brownie Beaver said.
“But he’s never been here.”
Jasper Jay gave one of his loud laughs.
“That—” he said—“that
is just where you are mistaken. And when I explain
how I came by this news, maybe you’ll believe
me.
“Tommy Fox told it to me,” Jasper went
on, “and old dog Spot told it to him. Everybody
knows that old Spot sometimes goes to town with his
master. They were there yesterday. And Spot
saw your picture himself. What’s more,
he heard the photographer tell Farmer Green that he
came up here almost a week ago, hid his camera in
some bushes, and set a flashlight near a half—gnawed
tree. And when you started to work on the tree
that night you brushed against a wire, and the flashlight
flared up, and the camera took your picture before
you could jump away.... Now what do you say?”
Jasper Jay demanded. “Now do you think
I’m telling you the truth?”
Brownie Beaver was so surprised that it was several
minutes before he could speak. Then he said:
“Grandaddy Beaver was right. It wasn’t
a gun. I was just having my picture taken.”
Brownie was actually pleased, because he knew he was
the only person in his village that had ever had such
a thing happen to him.
After that he was ready to believe everything Jasper
Jay told him. So Jasper related some wonderful
news. And it would hardly be fair for anyone
not present at the time to say that it wasn’t
perfectly true— every word of it.
[Illustration: The Chain Caught on a Bush and
Tripped Him]
LOOKING PLEASANT
After Jasper Jay left Brownie Beaver, on that day
when Jasper told Brownie that the photographer had
made a flashlight picture of him, Brownie could hardly
wait for it to grow dark. He had made up his mind
that he would go back to that same tree, which was
still not quite gnawed through; and he hoped that
he would succeed in having his picture taken again.
Like many other people, Brownie Beaver felt that he
could not have too much of a good thing.
There was another reason, too, for his going back
to the tree. If the light flared again and the
click sounded in the bushes, Brownie intended to go
right into the thicket and get his picture before
anybody else could carry it away with him. (You can
understand how little he understood about taking photographs.)
Well, the dark found Brownie back at the tree once
more. And he began once more to gnaw at it.
He tried to look pleasant, too, because he had heard
that that was the way one should look when having his
picture taken.
