"
"It must be cozy and awfully safe," said the Babe, who began to want a
place like that himself.
"Yes, _fine_!" agreed Uncle Andy. "And safe from everything but the
mink; and if _he_ came in by one door, there was always another door
open for them to get out by, so quick that the mink could never see
their tails.
"Old Dagger Bill, of course, could never get into the house of the
Water Babies, for all his wonderful swimming and diving, because he was
so big--as big as a goose. But, as a rule, he wouldn't want to bother
the Water Babies. Fish were much more to Dagger Bill's taste than
young muskrat; and he could swim so fast under water that few fish ever
escaped him, once he got after them.
"This summer, however, things were different at Long Pond. Hitherto it
had fairly swarmed with fish--lake trout, suckers, chub, red fins, and
so on. But that spring some scoundrel had dynamited the waters for the
sake of the big lake trout. Few fish had survived the outrage. And
even so clever a fisherman as Dagger Bill would have gone hungry most
of the time had he not been clever enough to vary his bill of fare.
"'If we can't have all the bread we want,' he said to the family, 'we
must try to get along on cake!'"
"Dagger Bill _might_ get _bread_ from some camp," interrupted the Babe
thoughtfully, being a matter-of-fact child.
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