the Green Meadow and the Old Pasture, turning the leaves gold and brown and blowing them from the trees; how the grasses would die and the animals that lived on them grow thin with hunger. He told how the cold rains would fall and flood the houses of small creatures like the Meadow Mouse. He described the snow, which sounded rather wonderful to the Meadow Mouse; but then he learned of the terrible cold that would bite him to the bone, and how the small birds would grow weak with cold and tumble frozen from their perches, and the fish would stop swimming and the Laughing Brook laugh no more because its mouth was stopped with ice.
"'But it's the End of the World,' cried the Meadow Mouse in despair.
"'So it would seem,' said the Black Crow gaily. "For some folks. Not for me. I'll get by. But you had better prepare yourself, Meadow Mouse, if you expect to stay among the living!'
"And with that the Black Crow flapped his heavy wings and took to the air, leaving the Meadow Mouse more puzzled and much more afraid than he had been before.
"But as he sat there chewing his grass-blade in the warmth of the kindly Sun, he saw how he might learn to survive the awful cold that Brother North-wind was bringing to the world."
"Okay, Billy. You know," Smoky said, "you don't have to say 'thee' every time you say 'the,' t-h-e. Just say 'the,' like you do when you're talking."
Billy Bush looked at him as though for the first time understanding that the word on paper and the word he said all day were the same. "The," he said.
"Right. Now who's next?"
Brother North-wind's Secret
"What he thought he would do," Terry Ocean read (too old really for this, Smoky thought), "was to go around the Great World as far as he could go and ask every creature how he intended to prepare himself for the coming Winter. He was so pleased with this plan that he filled himself full of the seeds and nuts that were so sadly plentiful all around, said goodbye to his wife and children, and set off that very noon.
"The first creature he came to was a fuzzy caterpillar on a twig. Though caterpillars are not known for being clever, the Meadow Mouse put the question to him anyway: What would he do to prepare himself for the Winter that's coming?
"'I don't know about Winter, whatever that may be,' the caterpillar said in his tiny voice. 'A change is certainly coming over me, though. I intend to wrap myself up in this lovely white silken thread I seem to have just learned how to spin, don't ask me how; and when I'm all wrapped up and stuck well on to this comfortable twig, I'll spend a long time there. Maybe forever. I don't know.'
"Well, that didn't seem like much of a solution to the Meadow Mouse, and with pity in his heart for the foolish caterpillar, he went on with his journey.
"Down at the Lily Pond, he met creatures he had never seen there before: great gray-brown birds with long graceful necks and black beaks. There were many of them, and they sailed across the Lily Pond dipping theirdong heads beneath the water and eating what they found there. 'Birds!' said the Meadow Mouse. 'Winter's coming! How do you intend to prepare yourselves?'
"'Winter's coming indeed,' said an old bird in a solemn voice. 'Brother North-wind has chased us from our homes. There the cold is already sharp. He's at out backs now, hurrying us on. We'll outfly him, though, fast as he is! We'll fly to the South, farther South than he's allowed to go; and there we'll be safe from Winter.'
"'How far?' the Meadow Mouse asked, hoping perhaps he could outrun Brother North-wind too.
"'Days and days and days, flying as fast as we can,' said the old one. 'We're late already.' And with a great beating of his wings he arose from the pond, tucking his black feet neatly against his white stomach. The others rose up after him, and together they flew off honking toward the warm South.
"The Meadow Mouse went on sadly, knowing he couldn't outrun the winter on broad strong wings like theirs. So absorbed was he in these thoughts that he nearly stumbled over a brown Mud Turtle at the Lily Pond's edge. The Meadow Mouse asked him what he would do when the Winter came.
"'Sleep,' said the Mud Turtle sleepily, wrinkled