[Ill.u.s.tration]
"Why should I, mother?" he replied, calmly. "What good would it do if I thought of you? And what need have I to meddle with women"s work? What must be must be. Hold your tongue now, while it lasts, for this is no joke!"
Then the reed-warblers saw how he raised himself on his tail and split across the middle of his back. Then he bent and twisted and pulled off his coat over his head.
"That"s that," he said, puffing and blowing. "Now for the trousers!"
Mrs. Reed-Warbler drew back her head, but immediately peeped down again.
And the cray-fish stretched and wriggled until, with a one, two, three, the sh.e.l.l of his tail was shed as well.
Now he was quite naked and funny to look at and talked with a very faint voice:
"Good-bye, mother," he said. "Give the young ones my love, for they will be gone, I daresay, before I come back again. I am retiring for ten days or so and shall be at home to n.o.body."
"You monster!" yelled Goody. "Just look at him ... now he"ll creep into his hole and lie there idle. In ten days" time he"ll come out again, in brand-new clothes, looking most awfully arrogant." She wrung her claws and glared terribly with her stalked eyes. "I should really like to crawl into the hole after him and bite him to death," she continued.
"His life isn"t worth twopence in his present condition. But I loved him once. And one is and remains just a silly woman."
"Yes, Goody Cray-Fish, and then you have the children," said little Mrs.
Reed-Warbler.
"That"s true," she replied. "And, indeed, they are my only comfort. The dear little things, I feel as if I would love to eat them. You should just see, ma"am, how they hang on to my skirts during the first week.
They are so fond of me that they simply can"t leave me."
"How nice that is!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Yes. And afterwards I have no trouble with them at all. You may believe me or not, as you please, dear lady, but, as soon as they are a week old, they go into the world and look after themselves. It"s in their blood. It has never been known in the pond for a twelve-day-old cray-fish to be a burden on his family. And then you"re done with them; and that may be rather sad, but, of course, it"s a relief as well: two hundred children like that, in a small household! But you shall see them, ma"am, when they come ... I really have to control myself in order not to eat them, they"re such dears!"
"Well, I"ll tell you something, Goody Cray-Fish," said Mrs.
Reed-Warbler. "When my young ones are out, you shall have the sh.e.l.ls."
"Oh, how good of you, ma"am!" said the cray-fish. "You could not possibly do me a greater kindness. For I promise you I shall eat them. I eat as much chalk as I can get hold of against the time when I change my things, for that puts starch into the new shirt. But then, also, you must really promise me, ma"am, to look at my young ones. They are so sweet that, goodness knows, I should like to eat them...."
At that moment, a large carp appeared in the water, with a sad, weary face:
"You do eat them," he said.
"Oh!" yelled Goody, and went backwards into her hole and showed herself no more.
But Mrs. Reed-Warbler fainted on her five eggs and the carp swam on with his sad, weary face.
CHAPTER IV
The Water-Spider
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Little Mrs. Reed-Warbler was not feeling very well.
She was nervous and tired from sitting on the eggs and she had just a touch of fever. She could not sleep at night, or else she dreamt of the cray-fish and the carp and the eel and screamed so loud that her husband nearly fell into the pond with fright.
"I wish we had gone somewhere else," she said. "Obviously, there"s none but common people in this pond. Just think how upset I was about Goody Cray-Fish. Do you really believe she eats her children?"
Before he could reply, the eel stuck his head out of the mud and made his bow:
"Absolutely, madam," he said, "ab-so-lutely. That is to say, if she can get hold of them. They decamp as soon as they can, for they have an inkling, you know, of what"s awaiting them. Children are cleverer than people think."
"But that"s terrible," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Oh, well," said the eel, "one eats so many things from year"s end to year"s end! I don"t condemn her for that. But, I admit, it doesn"t look well amid all that show of affection.... Hullo, there"s the pike!...
Forgive me for retiring in the middle of this interesting conversation."
He was off.
And the pike appeared among the reeds with wide-open mouth and rows of sharp teeth and angry eyes.
"Oof!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Come down here and I"ll eat you," said the pike, grinning with all his teeth.
"Please keep to your own element," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler, indignantly.
"I eat everything," said the pike, "ev-e-ry-thing. I smell eel, I smell cray-fish, I smell carp. Where are they? Tell me at once, or I"ll break your reed with one blow of my tail!"
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PIKE APPEARED AMONG THE REEDS [p. 38 ]
The reed-warblers were silent for sheer terror. And the pike struck out with his tail and swam away. The blow was so powerful that the reeds sighed and swayed and the birds flew up with startled screams. But the reeds held and the nest remained where it was. Mrs. Reed-Warbler settled down again and her husband began to sing, so that no one should see how frightened he had been. Then she said:
"A nice place this!"
[Ill.u.s.tration]
"You take things too much to heart," said he. "Life is the same everywhere; and we must be satisfied as long as we can get on well together. I am very much afraid that all this excitement will hurt the children"s voices and then they will disgrace us at the autumn concert.
Pull yourself together and control yourself!"
"It"s easy for you to talk," she said. "And I know well enough what life is worth. My innocent little sister was eaten by an adder and my mother was caught by a hawk, just after she had taught us to fly. I myself had to travel in hot haste to Italy, last autumn, if I didn"t want to die of hunger. Then you came; and I have already learnt that marriage is not an unmixed blessing. After all, one would be glad of peace just after the children are born. And then, of course, I think of what the children will grow up like in this murderers" den. Children take after others.
And such examples as they see before them here! Really, it might end in their eating their parents!"
"Yes, why not, if they taste good?" asked a ladylike voice on the surface of the water.
Mrs. Reed-Warbler shrank back and hardly dared look down.
A little water-spider sat on the leaf of a water-lily and smoothed her fine velvet dress.
"You"re looking very hard at me, Mrs. Reed-Warbler, but you won"t eat me," she said. "I lie too heavy on the stomach. I am a bit poisonous ...
just poisonous enough, of course, and no more. Apart from that, I am really the most inoffensive woman in the water."