Again Brownie Beaver looked a bit doubtful.
“I hope you’ll try to be regular,”
he told Mr. Crow. “When a person takes
a newspaper he doesn’t like to be disappointed,
you know.”
Old Mr. Crow said that he hoped nothing would prevent
his coming to Brownie’s house every Saturday
afternoon.
“There’s only one more thing I can think
of,” he croaked, “that would make it impossible
for me to be here. And that is if I should lose
count of the days of the week or have to see a baseball
game or fly south for the winter.”
“But that’s three things, instead
of only one,” Brownie Beaver objected.
“Well—maybe it is,” Mr. Crow
replied—“the way you count. But
I call it only one because I said it all in one breath,
without a single pause.”
“I hope you won’t tell me the news as
fast as that,” said Brownie Beaver, “for
if you did I should never be able to remember one-half
of it.”
But Mr. Crow promised that he would talk very slowly.
“You’ll be perfectly satisfied,”
he told Brownie. “And now I must go home
at once, to begin gathering news.”
A NEWFANGLED NEWSPAPER
After Mr. Crow flew back to Pleasant Valley to gather
news for him, Brownie Beaver carefully counted each
day that passed. Since Mr. Crow had agreed to
be his newspaper, and come each Saturday afternoon
to tell him everything that had happened during the
week, Brownie was in a great hurry for Saturday to
arrive.
In order to make no mistake, he put aside a stick
in which he gnawed a notch each day. And in that
way he knew exactly when Saturday came.
That was probably the longest day in Brownie Beaver’s
life. At least, it seemed so to him. Whenever
he saw a bird soaring above the tree-tops he couldn’t
help hoping it was Mr. Crow. And whenever he heard
a caw—caw far off in the
distance Brownie Beaver dropped whatever he happened
to be doing, expecting that Mr. Crow would flap into
sight at any moment.
Brownie had many disappointments. But Mr. Crow
really came at last. He lighted right on top
of Brownie Beaver’s house and called “Paper!”
down the chimney—just like that!
Brownie happened to be inside his house. And
in a wonderfully short time his head appeared above
the water and he soon crawled up beside Mr. Crow.
“Well, I am glad to see you!” he
told Mr. Crow.
“Peter Mink caught a monstrous eel in the duck
pond on Monday,” Mr. Crow said. Being a
newspaper, he thought he ought to say nothing except
what was news—not even “Good afternoon!”
“Mr. Rabbit, of Pine Ridge, with his wife and
fourteen children, is visiting his brother, Mr. Jeremiah
Rabbit. Mrs. Jeremiah Rabbit says she does not
know when her husband’s relations are going home,”
Mr. Crow continued to relate in a singsong voice.
