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.
"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.
CHAPTER III
A Mother
Time passed 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 God 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
