14 THE MAGIC OAK TREE

brothers and sisters could not give him any
advice, or, if they could, he could not under-
stand it, for all they could do was to hop
and croak around him in a manner which
showed him how disturbed and unhappy
they were, but gave him no sort of idea
what he was to do to help them in their
distress. Under these circumstances, the
boy thought that the best thing he could do
would be to walk straight on and wait to see
if anything would turn up. Here, however,
a difficulty presented itself, for when the
nurse tried to catch the frogs in order to put
them once more into her apron, they showed
a strange dislike to being caught. Instead
of coming up and hopping into her lap as
they had done before, the little creatures all
began to hop away from her as fast as they
could, The nurse thought that they must
have been shaken and jumbled together in
an uncomfortable way when she had at first
taken them up, and the thought crossed little
Hurly-Burly’s mind that perhaps they had
been getting more and more like real frogs
ever since they had been changed into that
shape, and that they were gradually forget-
ting all about their former state and life.