TIIK STORY Ul' riKlC. 
11 
He made a great stir with his pole, but no muskrat 
came, and the girl laughed at him. The boy was almost 
always telling her to see him do something, and she was 
almost always laughing at him. She had a pretty way of 
laughing, which he remembered a great many years aft¬ 
erward. 
Whenever Pike went along by the shore of the lake, he 
alwa^’S saw a great number of fresh-water mussels, or 
clams. These clams live half-buried in the sand, standing 
nearly upright, and with a big, .soft, fleshy foot under¬ 
neath, by means of which they push themselves along. 
They move very slowly, so .slowly that one cannot .see that 
they move at all; and yet in still water the line or furrow 
which they make in the sand is frequentl}^ four or five feet 
long. 
Late one afternoon in fall, as Pike was resting by the 
lake shore after taking a little journey and eating a bigger 
minnow than usual, he saw two muskrats busily at work 
digging the clams from the sand and carrying them one by 
one to an open, gra.ssy spot on the bank. They made a 
large pile of clams without stopping to taste of one of 
them, although muskrats are very fond of clams and are 
skillful at opening them by biting through the hinge at the 
back with their sharp teeth. 
Of course Pike could not see what happened in the dark, 
but as he lay clo.se to the .shore that night he knew by the 
waves and splashes around him that a great many muskrats 
were coming tliat way and climbing up the bank. The truth 
is, although Pike did not know it, that the 1)ig muskrats 
and the little muskrats from all that part of the lake, and 
from up the brook, had come to share in a clam supper. 
They gathered in a circle round the pile of clams and 
ate without any noise or greedy quarreling. Kven the lit¬ 
tle muskrats kept very quiet and behaved properly. Kv- 
