He could perceive the little brown head very plainly now, and, as it drew nearer, he could distinguish the outline of the body just under the surface, and back of that the queer, rubbery, flattened tail set edge-wise in the water and moving rapidly from side to side. “It’s a regular propeller,” thought Tommy, “and he certainly knows how to use it. It sculls him right along. If he should lose that, he sure would be up against it!” Tommy moved ever so little, so as to get a better view. Instantly there was a sharp slap of the tail on the water, a plunge, and only a ripple to show that a second before there had been a swimmer there. Two other slaps and plunges sounded from distant parts of the Smiling Pool and Tommy knew that he would see no more muskrats unless he sat very still for a long time. Slowly he got to his feet, stretched, and then started for home. All the way across the Green Meadows he kept thinking of that little glimpse of muskrat life he had had, and for the first time in his life he began to think that there might be something more interesting about a muskrat than his fur coat. Always before, he had thought of a muskrat as simply a rat, a big, overgrown cousin of the pests that stole the grain in the hen-house, and against whom every man’s hand is turned, as it should be. But somehow that little glimpse of Jerry Muskrat at home had awakened a new interest. It struck him quite suddenly that it was a very wonderful thing that an animal breathing air, just as he did himself, could be so at home in the water and disappear so suddenly and completely. “It must be fine to be able to swim like that!” thought Tommy as he sat down on the wishing-stone, and looked back across the Green Meadows to the Smiling Pool. “I wonder what he does down there under water. Now I think of it, I don’t know much about him except that he is the only rat with a fur that is good for anything. If it wasn’t for that fur coat of his, I don’t suppose anybody would bother him. What a snap he would have then! I guess he has no end of fun in the summer, with nothing to worry about and plenty to eat, and always cool and comfortable no matter what the weather! “What gets me is how he spends the winter when everything is frozen. He must be under the ice for weeks. I wonder if he sleeps the way the woodchuck does. I suppose I can find out just by wishing, seeing that I’m sitting right here on the old wishing-stone. It would be a funny thing to do to wish myself into a rat. It doesn’t seem as if there could be anything very interesting about the life of anything so stupid-looking as a muskrat, and yet I’ve thought the same thing about some other creatures and found I was wrong.” He gazed dreamily down toward the Smiling Pool, and, the longer he looked, the more he wondered what it would be like to live there. At last, almost without knowing it, he said the magic words. “I--I wish I were a muskrat!” he murmured.