Summer
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The whole pond was alive.
There were not only great, horrid pikes and great mannerly carp and
roach and perch and sticklebacks and eels. There were cray-fish and
frogs and newts, pond-snails and fresh-water mussels, water-beetles and
daddy-long-legs, whirligigs and ever so many others.
There was the duck, who quacked at her ducklings, and the swan, who
glided over the water with bent neck and rustling wings, stately and
elegant. There was the dragon-fly, who buzzed through the air, and there
were the dragon-fly's young, who crawled upon the water-plants and ate
till they burst. But that did not matter; they just had to burst, if
they were to come to anything.
There was the bladder-wort, who had his innocent white flowers above the
water and his death-traps down at the bottom; the spider, who was still
his lodger and now had the whole ceiling full of eggs, and hundreds of
thousands of midge-grubs, who lay on the surface of the water and stuck
up their air-vessels and hurried down to the bottom the moment a shadow
fell over the pond. There were hundreds of thousands of midges, who
danced in the air, and there was the water-lily, who knew how beautiful
she was, and who was unapproachable for self-conceit.
There were many more, whom you could not count without getting dizzy.
And then there were the tadpoles, who were ever so many and ever so
merry. And you only had to take a drop of water and examine it through a
magnifying-glass to see how it swarmed with tiny little animals, who all
danced about and ate one another without the least compunction.
But just under the reed-warblers' nest there was a little May-fly grub,
who was in a terrible state of fright.
She had entered into conversation with little Mrs. Reed-Warbler one day,
when the latter had gone all the way down the reed to find food for her
five youngsters, who were simply insatiable and kept on crying for more.
Just at that moment, the May-fly grub had come up to the surface; and
now the bird's beak was exactly over her.
"Let me live," said she.
"That's what they all say," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "My children have to
live, too!"
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So saying she tried to snatch her. But the grub wriggled so and looked
so queer that she could not.
"Listen to me for a moment," said the grub; "then I'm sure that you
won't hurt me. I am so small and so thin and fill so little space in a
stomach."
"Well, what is it?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"I have lived here a long time," said the grub. "I have heard you talk
to your husband and to the cray-fish and the eel and the spider. It was
all so beautiful, what you said. I am certain that you have a good
heart."
"I don't know about my heart," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "But I know I
have five hungry children."
"I am a child myself," said the grub. "And I should so awfully like to
live till I grow up."
"Do you think that life is so pleasant?"
"I don't know. I am only a child, you see. I crawl about down here and
wait. When I am grown up, I shall have wings and be able to fly like
you."
"You don't surely imagine that you're a bird?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Oh, no! I certainly don't aim so high as that. I shall just become a
May-fly."
"I know them," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "I have eaten lots of them. They
taste very good."
"Oh, well, in that case, do wait for me to grow up, before you eat me. I
shall only live for a few hours, you know, when I get my wings. I shall
just have time to fly once round the pond and lay my eggs in the water.
Then I must die. And then you may eat me and welcome. But let me go now.
And tell your husband also. He has been after me twice."
"Very well," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler, "though it's foolish of me. You'll
probably cheat me and let someone else eat you first."
"I shall do my best to escape," said the grub. "And, now, thank you ever
so much."
Before the grub had done speaking, little Mrs. Reed-Warbler was up in
the nest again, with six midge-grubs, which she had caught in one bite.
Her husband was there too with a dragon-fly, which the children tore to
pieces and ate up amid cries of delight.
"There's nothing the matter with their appetites or with their voices
either," he said. "If only they could shift for themselves! I am as lean
as a skeleton."
"And what about me?" said she. "But the children are thriving and that
is the great thing."
He sighed and flew away and came home and flew away again; and so it
went on till evening. Then they both sat wearily on the edge of the nest
and looked out across the smooth pond:
"It is curious how the life exhausts one," she said. "Sometimes, when I
feel thoroughly tired, I can almost understand those animals who let
their children look after themselves. Did you notice the eel the other
day? How fat and gay he is."
"Are you talking of me, madam?" asked the eel, sticking his head out of
the mud.
"Oh, you're always there!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"More or less. One has to wriggle and twist."
"Have you any news of your children?"
"No, thank goodness!"
"Oh, really?" said the perch. "I have an idea that I ate a couple of
them at breakfast.... Excuse me for being so frank!"
"Not at all, not at all!" said the eel. "The family is large enough even
so."
"How on earth did they come up here from the sea?" asked the roach.
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"Just as I did, I imagine," said the eel. "They've got scent of
something to be made here; and two or three miles are nothing to them."
"Heigho!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Are you sighing because of all this fuss with the children? Well,
madam, what did I tell you?"
"Not at all," replied Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "I could never behave like
you."
[Illustration: 'OH! REALLY,' SAID THE PERCH [p. 64 ]
"One has one's duties," said the reed-warbler. "And the loftier one's
station in life, the heavier the duties."
"Thank goodness, then, that I am of lowly station," said the eel. "I
have a capital time in the mud."
"Then, again, one is interested in preserving a certain amount of poetry
in the world. There is plenty of rabble, plenty of ugliness, I admit.
All the more reason why we higher animals should do something to promote
the ideal. And I can't imagine anything more ideal than a father's
labours on behalf of his family, even though they do become rather
fatiguing at times."
"You're tremendously up in the clouds to-day, Mr. Reed-Warbler," said
the eel. "Every one to his taste. But, as for poetry, I must confess
that I have not seen much of it in my life. And yet I have wriggled and
twisted about the world a good deal. The great question, everywhere, is
eating and eating and eating. And those who have children to care for
are the worst robbers of the lot. Good-bye."
"That's a disgusting fellow," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "It was very nice
of you to give him a piece of your mind. I quite agree with you.
Besides, I myself performed a really fine action to-day."
She ran to the reed and looked into the water:
"Are you there, my little grub?" she asked.
"Yes, thank you," said the May-fly grub.
"And how are you?"
"Fairly. The eel almost caught sight of me; and I was nearly getting
into the bladder-wort's prison; and the water-spider was after me before
that. Otherwise, I'm all right."
"What's this now?" asked the reed-warbler.
"Oh," answered his wife, "it's a protegee of mine! A little May-fly
grub. I promised that I wouldn't eat her. She is so happy at the thought
of being grown-up ... and that only for a couple of hours, poor little
thing!"
She said nothing about her intention of eating the grub when she was
grown up; and the reed-warbler was seriously angry.
"What sentimental gammon!" he said. "It's unseemly for a woman with five
children to commit such follies."
"I thought it so poetic to give her leave to live," said she.
"Fiddlesticks!" said her husband. "Poetry doesn't apply to one's food.
If it did, we should all die of hunger. Besides you can't take a
creature like that into consideration."
Thereupon he ran down the reed and hunted eagerly for the grub, to eat
her.
But she heard what he said and had gone down to the bottom with terror
in her little heart.