THE MATING OF BROWNIE 175 
rabbits, lived in danger. Traps were even set 
along this very brook for muskrat. But few 
were the hunters who suspected that otters were 
about, and fewer still the hunters or trappers who 
knew how to capture them. Brownie and his 
brother and sister arrived in a home that was hid- 
den beneath the ground, with two strong, ener- 
getic parents to look after them, beside a brook 
that led to fishing grounds so well stocked that 
the lengthening shadow of the high cost of living 
cast no gloom across the domestic hearth. There 
was no reason at all why they should not have 
been chubby, contented, good-natured youngsters. 
As a matter of fact, they were. 
It wasn’t long before their parents decided the 
,time had come to teach them to swim. If there 
is one thing an otter can do better than anything 
else (or anyone else, for that matter), it is to 
swim. He can swim down a pickerel, for ex- 
ample, which would undoubtedly land him the 
captaincy of the swimming team if he went to 
college. If he was a lady otter, he might get a 
better job in the movies than Annette Keller- 
mann, for he swims as gracefully as she, which 
