A Man of The World
[Illustration]
Little Mrs. Reed-Warbler heaved five deep sighs and, at each sigh, she
laid an egg. Then she sat down on the eggs and sighed again.
And the reeds swayed in the balmy wind and the nest swayed and the eggs
swayed that lay in the nest and the dear little brown bird that sat on
the eggs. Even the husband swayed. For, when one rush sways, the other
sways too; and he was sitting on one just beside the nest.
"You're no worse off than others, darling," he said. "Look down into the
water and see for yourself."
"I can see nothing," she said sadly.
"Fiddlesticks!" said the reed-warbler. "You can peep over for a minute,
if you sit down again at once."
And so she peeped over.
It was certainly very busy down below.
[Illustration]
The pond-snail was swimming with her pointed shell on her back. She
stood right on her head in the water and made a boat of her broad foot,
which lay level with the surface of the pond and supported the whole
fabric. Then she stretched out her foot and the boat was gone and she
went down to the bottom and stuck a whole heap of slimy eggs to the
stalk of a water-lily.
The pike came and laid an egg in a water-milfoil bush. The carp did the
same; and the perch hung a nice nest of eggs in between the reeds where
the warblers had built their nest. The frog brought her eggs, the
stickleback had almost finished his nest and hundreds of animals that
were so small that one could hardly see them ran about and made ready
for their young ones.
Just then, the eel put his head up out of the mud:
"If you will permit me, madam ... I have seen a bit of the world
myself...."
Mrs. Reed-Warbler gave a faint scream.
"I can't stand that person," she said to her husband. "He's so like the
adder, who ate my little sister last year, when she fell to the ground
as she was learning to fly. He has the same offensive manners and is
just as slippery."
"Oh," said the eel, "it's a great misfortune for me if I meet with your
disapproval, madam, on that account. And it's quite unjust. I am only a
fish and not the slightest relation to the adder, who took that little
liberty with your sister, madam. We may have just a superficial
resemblance, in figure and movement: one has to wriggle and twist. But I
am really much more slippery. My name, for that matter, is Eel ... at
your service."
"My wife is hatching her eggs," said the reed-warbler. "She can't stand
much excitement."
"Thank you for telling me, Mr. Reed-Warbler," said the eel. "I did not
mean to intrude.... But as I have travelled considerably myself, like
you and your good lady, I thought I might venture to address you, in the
hope that we may hold the same liberal opinions concerning the petty
affairs of the pond."
"So you are a traveller. Can you fly?" asked the reed-warbler.
"Not exactly," said the eel. "I can't fly. But I can wriggle and twist.
I can get over a good stretch of country, which is more than most fish
are able to say. I feel grand in the damp grass; and give me the most
ordinary ditch and you'll never hear me complain. I come straight from
the sea, you know. And, when I've eaten myself fat here, I shall go back
to the sea again."
"That's saying a good deal," said the reed-warbler.
"Yes," said the eel, modestly. "And just because I have seen something
of the world, all this fuss about children in the pond here strikes me
as a bit absurd."
"You're talking rather thoughtlessly, my good Eel," said the
reed-warbler. "I can see you have neither wife nor children."
"Oh," said the eel, making a fine flourish with his tail, "that depends
on how you look at it! Last year, I brought about a million eels into
the world."
"Goodness gracious me!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Aren't you exaggerating?" asked her husband, who was equally impressed,
but did not wish to show it.
"Possibly," replied the eel. "That's easily done, with such large
figures. But it's of no consequence. You can divide it by two, if that
eases your conscience."
"And what about your own conscience, as the father of such an enormous
progeny?"
"I never really consulted it," said the eel.
"And how's your wife?" asked little Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Can't say. I never saw her."
"You never saw your wife?"
"No, madam. Nor my children either."
"Indeed, you do your friends an injustice," said the reed-warbler. "For,
only a moment ago, with my own eyes I saw how the stickleback built a
nest down there for his children."
"The stickleback!" said the eel, with a sneer. "I can't stand
sticklebacks: they prick me so horribly in the neck. But that has
nothing to do with the case. What is a stickleback, I ask you? I
remember once when I was caught and about to be skinned. I was very
small at the time and the cook, who was going to put a knife into me,
said 'No bigger than a stickleback'!"
"Were you caught? Were you about to be skinned?" asked the reed-warbler.
"How on earth did you escape?"
"I slipped away from the cook," replied the eel. "Thanks to my
slipperiness, which your good lady disliked. Then I got into the sink
... out through the gutter, the gutter-pipe, the ditch and so on. One
has to wriggle and twist."
"You may well say that!" said the reed-warbler.
"One goes through a bit of everything, you see," said the eel. "But to
return to what we were saying, take us eels, for instance. We fling our
young into the sea and, for the rest, leave them to their own resources.
Like men of the world that we are, we know what life is worth and
therefore we fling them out wholesale, by the million, as I said just
now: I beg pardon, by the half-million; I don't want to offend your love
of accuracy. In this way, the children learn to shift for themselves at
once. I was brought up in this way myself and learnt to wriggle and
twist."
"I can't understand it," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Very sorry," said the eel. "Perhaps my conversation is rather too much
for a lady who is sitting on her eggs."
"I think children are the sweetest things in the world," she said. "One
can't help being fond of them, whether they're one's own or another's."
"The ladies are always right," said the eel, eating a couple of
caddis-grubs and a little worm. "But am I mistaken, or did I see you eat
a grub just now, madam, which your husband brought you?"
"A grub...?"
"Yes ... isn't that a child too?"
"I shall faint in a minute," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler; and she did.
"Wriggle and twist!" said the eel; and off he went.
The reed-warbler brought his wife back to life with three fat flies,
seven sweet songs and a jog on her neck.
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"You ought to appreciate me, at any rate!" he said, when she was
sufficiently recovered for him to speak to her. "The way I feed you and
sing to you! Think what other husbands are like."
"So I do," she replied.