If anyone tells you he knows all about a loon, you wink to yourself and pretend you are not listening.

But I'll tell you who _do_ know something about old Dagger Bill--the Water Babies.
"Who're the Water Babies ?" demanded the Babe.
"Why don't you know _that_?
The little muskrats, of course, that live in the warm, dry, dark nest under the dome of their mud house, out in the water--the house with its doors so far under water that no one can get into it without diving and swimming." "It must be cozy and awfully safe," said the Babe, who began to want a place like that himself.
"Yes, _fine_!" agreed Uncle Andy.

"And safe from everything but the mink; and if _he_ came in by one door, there was always another door open for them to get out by, so quick that the mink could never see their tails.
"Old Dagger Bill, of course, could never get into the house of the Water Babies, for all his wonderful swimming and diving, because he was so big--as big as a goose.

But, as a rule, he wouldn't want to bother the Water Babies.

Fish were much more to Dagger Bill's taste than young muskrat; and he could swim so fast under water that few fish ever escaped him, once he got after them.
"This summer, however, things were different at Long Pond.