But it wasn't, so I had to make a pond. It required a
lot of hard work, but it is worth all it cost.
"First, I cut a lot of brush and young trees and placed them in
the Laughing Brook in that shallow place, with the butts pointing
up-stream. I kept them in place by piling mud and stones on them.
Then I kept piling on more sticks and brush and mud. The water
brought down leaves and floating stuff, and this caught in the
dam and helped fill it in. I dug a lot of mud in front of it and
used this to fill in the spaces between the sticks. This made the
water deeper in front of the dam and at the same time kept it from
getting through. As the water backed up, of course it made a pond.
I kept making my dam longer and higher, and the longer and higher
it became the bigger the pond grew. When it was big enough and
deep enough to suit me, I stopped work on the dam and built my
house out there."
Everybody turned to look at Paddy's house, the roof of which stood
high out of water a little way from the dam. "Tell us how you
built that" said Old Mother Nature quietly.
"Oh, I just made a big platform of sticks and mud out there where
it was deep enough for me to be sure that the water could not
freeze clear to the bottom, even in the coldest weather," replied
Paddy, in a matter-of-fact tone. "I built it up until it was
above water.
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