Although everybody in the Beaver¹ village looked worried, Mr. Frog seemed to be all the more cheerful. He knew well enough that there was hardly one Beaver in the pond that didn't wish and long for clothes which were, like Mr. Frog's, five years ahead of the times.  
As day after day passed, not only were the Beavers² unable to do a single stroke of work; they were so upset that they could scarcely eat or sleep. And at last the older villagers, such as Grandaddy Beaver, began to see that something would have to be done. There was the dam, which needed mending; and there was the winter's food, which had to be gathered.
 
So Grandaddy Beaver went to Ferdinand Frog one day and told him that he simply must come to the rescue of the pond folk, and tell them how they might have clothes as far ahead of the times as were his own.
 
"Why?" Mr. Frog inquired. "What's the trouble?"
 
"They can't work," Grandaddy Beaver told him. "And there's the dam to be fixed³, and tree-tops to be cut and stored for food, because winter's a-coming, and there's no way we can stop it."
 
"I'll tell you what you and your people can do," Ferdinand Frog replied. "Just bury yourselves in the mud during the winter, as I do, and you'd have no use for a dam, nor for food, either."
 
But Grandaddy Beaver explained that though such a plan might suit a Frog exceedingly well, for a Beaver it would never do at all.
 
"You have got us into this scrape," he told Mr. Frog, "so it's only fair that you should help us out of it."
 
Ferdinand Frog then did a number of things, all of............