The Pond Part 2

Time pa.s.sed and all respectable bird-wives were sitting on their eggs and wearing a serious look in their eyes, while their husbands went hunting for flies or sang to them.

It was the same at the Reed-Warblers'. But there was no denying that the husband was sometimes a little tired and cross. Then he would reflect upon the easy time which the Eel husband had and the Frog husband and the Perch husband and all the others.

One evening he sat in the nest and sang:

Now spring is here, to G.o.d all praise!

Though in hard work I'm up to the eyes.

For billing and cooing I'd just seven days; Now I've to flutter about after flies For my little wife, who our eggs is hatching; And don't those flies just take some catching!

And each chick will want food for the good of its voice.

Aha, I have every right to rejoice!

"If you're tired of it, why did you do it?" said little Mrs.

Reed-Warbler. "You took pains enough to curry favour with me at first.

How smart you used to look. I believe you're already beginning to lose your colouring."

"It's weary work," he said. "When a fellow has to go after flies like this, in all weathers, his wedding-finery soon wears out."

"I don't think you're singing as nicely as you did," said she.

"Really? Well, I can just as easily stop. It's for your sake that I pipe my tune. Besides, you can see for yourself that I'm only joking. I'm tremendously glad of the children. It will be an honour and a pleasure to me to stuff them till they burst. Perhaps we might have been satisfied with three."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she said.

"So I am, dear, because of the other two. But, as I don't know which two those are, it makes no difference."

She put on a very serious face. But he caught a fat fly that was pa.s.sing, popped it into her mouth and struck up so pretty a trill that she fell quite in love with him again.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

At that moment a deep sigh rose from the water under the bank.

"That came from a mother," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "I could hear that plainly."

"That's what it did," said a hoa.r.s.e voice.

The Reed-Warblers peeped down and beheld a cray-fish, who sat in the mud staring with her stalked eyes.

"Dear me, is that you, Goody Cray-Fish?" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"It is indeed, dear madam," said the cray-fish. "It's myself and no other. I was just sitting down here in my dirt listening to what the quality were saying. Heavens, what a good time a fine lady like you enjoys, compared with another!"

"Every one has his burden," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "Believe me, it's no joke sitting here and perspiring."

The cray-fish crossed her eyes and folded her antennae.

"Yes, you may well talk," said she. "How long does it last with you?

Four or five weeks, I should say. But I have to go for six months with mine."

"Goodness gracious! But then you can move about."

"Oh," said Goody, "moving is always a rather slow matter for a cray-fish. And then you have only five eggs, ma'am, but I have two hundred."

"Dear me!" said the reed-warbler. "Then your poor husband has to slave to provide food for that enormous family."

"He? The monster!" replied the cray-fish. "He knows too much for that. I haven't so much as seen him since the wedding."

"Then you must have a huge, big nest for all those eggs," said the wife.

"It's easy to see that you don't know poor folks' circ.u.mstance, dear madam," said the cray-fish. "People of our cla.s.s can't afford nests. No, I just have to drag the eggs about with me as best I may."

"Where are they, then, Goody Cray-Fish?"

"I carry them on my hind legs, lady. I have ten little hind legs, you see, besides my eight proper legs and my claws, which are very necessary to bite one's way through this wicked world with. And on each of my hind legs there is a heap of twenty eggs. That makes two hundred in all. I'll show them to you, if you like. The eggs are worth looking at."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

So saying, the cray-fish turned over on her back and stuck out her tail as far as she could. And there the eggs were, just as she had said, on ten little back legs.

"That comes of having too many hind-legs," said the reed-warbler.

"For shame! To poke fun at the poor woman!" said his wife.

But the cray-fish slowly turned round again and said, quietly:

"Gentlemen are always so witty. We women understand one another better.

And I shouldn't so much mind about the eggs, if it wasn't that one can't change one's clothes."

"Change your clothes?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"Yes, ma'am ... you change yours too, from time to time, I know. I have seen the feathers with my own eyes, floating on the water. And it goes so easily and quickly: a feather here, a feather there and it's done.

But other people, who wear a stiff s.h.i.+rt, have to take it all off at once. And I can't do that, you see, as long as I am carrying the eggs about. Therefore, since I have been married, I change only once a year.

Now one always grows a bit stouter, even though one is but a common woman; and so I feel pretty uncomfortable sometimes, I a.s.sure you."

Mrs. Reed-Warbler was greatly touched; and her husband began to sing, for he was afraid lest all this sadness should make the eggs melancholy and spoil the children's voices.

But, at that moment, the cray-fish screamed and struck out with her claws and carried on like a mad woman.

"Look!... Ma'am ... do look!... There comes the monster!"

Mrs. Reed-Warbler leant so far over the edge of the nest that she would have plumped into the pond if her husband had not given her a good shove. But he had no time to scold her, for he was curious himself. They both stared down into the water.

And there, as she had said, came Goody Cray-Fish's husband slowly creeping up to her backwards.

"Good-day, mother," he said. "I'm going to change."

"Oh, are you?" she screamed. "Yes, that's just like you. You can run and change at any moment while your poor lawfully-wedded wife has to go about in her old clothes. You would do better to think of me and the children."