see it clearly
Peter Rabbit Finds Everybody Busy
By Thornton W. Burgess
Peter Rabbit actually felt lonesome. He had nothing in particular to do and he wanted to pay, but there was no one to play with. Happy Jack the Gray Squirrel, Chatterer the Red Squirrel and Striped Chipmunk were so busy that they couldn't even stop to talk, to say nothing of play. There were getting ready for winter. Even Whitefoot the Wood Mouse was doing the same thing. Peter watched them a while but is actually tired him to watch them run back and forth so fast.
"I'll just run down to the Smiling Pool again and see if perhaps after all Grandfather Frog was fooling when he said that he would see me again in the spring, just as if he wouldn't see me until then," thought Peter, and started off down the Lone Little Path, lipperty, lipperty-lip.
When he had reached the Smiling Pool he looked eagerly for Grandfather Frog. There was the big lily-pad on which Grandfather Frog had sat all summer, but it was bare and forlorn looking. Somehow it gave Peter still more of a lonesome feeling and a queer little lump crept up in his throat. He was just about to turn back to the Green Meadows when he saw a little brown head in the Smiling Pool. Peter's face brightened.
"Hello there, Jerry Muskrat!" he shouted.
Jerry didn't say a word. He couldn't for you see his mouth was full of sweet flag root. Instead he dived right close to his splendid big house. A minute later his little brown head bobbed up again.
"Hello, Peter Rabbit!" said he. "What makes you look so sober? You look as if you had lost your last friend."
"I haven't yet and shall not as long as you are here," grinned Peter. "But I seem to be losing them pretty fast," he added sadly.
"How is that?" asked Jerry, climbing up on the roof of his house.
Then Peter poured out all his troubles to Jerry Muskrat. He told how Johnny chuck had disappeared down in the ground, and Grandfather Frog had disappeared in the Smiling Pool, and old Mistah Buzzard had disappeared in the blue, blue sky, and how each had promised to see him in the spring. The he told how Happy Jack Squirrel and Chatterer the Red Squirrel and Striped Chipmunk were so busy getting ready for winter that they couldn't stop to play or even to answer questions.
"And I don't understand it at all," Peter ended.
Jerry Muskrat looked at the troubled face of Peter Rabbit and laughed.
"You're just the same old Peter, worrying about something that doesn't concern you in the least, aren't you?" cried Jerry. "If you don't have to prepare for winter you ou8ght to think yourself very luck. Now, I do. That is the reason that I built this house and that is the reason that I have got to go after some more flag root right now."
Splash! Jerry Muskrat had disappeared and once more Peter Rabbit was sitting all alone on the bank of the Smiling Pool. Peter waited a little while but Jerry did not return. Then slowly Peter Rabbit hopped away across the Green Meadows to the dear Old Brier Patch where he sat and thought and thought all the rest of that day.