Part 3

The last notes struck the listener squarely. He too could sing. Had he not sung against the wood-pecker, yaffle for yaffle, note for note? He swelled himself to bursting point, shut both his eyes, strained to their uttermost the voice-chords underneath his tongue, and loosed one mighty "Yaup!" It cut the last "_Ko-ax_" in half, and as its rattle spent itself, he looked to see what came of it. He looked in vain. The French Frog was not there.

The Natterjack at first was jubilant (a signal victory this) but quiet reflection sobered him.

His mission was to bring the French Frog with him. Now there was no French Frog to bring. He searched five yards each way, then gloomily retraced his steps.

He found the King Toad sleeping, and pausing at a prudent range, croaked nervously.

The King Toad made no sign.

He croaked again, and louder.

The King Toad moved uneasily. His eyebrows twitched, and one eye half revealed itself. Upper and under lids stayed fast, but, in their crescent interval, a third lid fluttered, a filmy, shadowy, cobweb thing, which brushed aside the dream-mists.

So in due order, decorously, to open round-eyed vision. The Natterjack was palpably distressed.

His mouth drooped dismally; he shuffled each squat foot in turn.

At last the King Toad spoke.

"I see a Natterjack," he said, "a starveling, mouse-legged Natterjack. I sent for a French Frog."

"Sire," said the Natterjack, his voice a-quiver, "I f-found him, but he v-vanished."

"Fetch him," thundered the King Toad.

The Natterjack fled headlong.

"I shall have to find him," he muttered to himself.

He stumbled on the Salamander. The Salamander, after working for an hour, had partially concealed himself. His smiling face alone was visible, framed by the grass-stems.

"Have--you--seen--the--French--Frog?" said the Natterjack, as loudly and as plainly as he could.

The Salamander turned his face away and smiled across his shoulder.

"Have--you--seen--the--French--Frog?" the Natterjack repeated.

The Salamander's face came slowly round again, still smiling. It was too much; no longer could the Natterjack contain himself. He ducked his head and pranced, his legs flung round him anyhow.

So for a mad five minutes; at last he got his answer, suave tones across the intervening grass: "Have I seen what?"

The Natterjack plunged straight into the pond. His nerves were over-wrought, his heart was racing. But for this cooling dive he must have burst. He rose among the lily leaves, and, clutching one, hung slantwise. Slowly the madness left him.

Then he commenced to paddle circumspectly.

He steered a zig-zag course, and, scanning every leaf in turn, came to the outskirts of the cluster. Here he sank slowly down, until his nose alone was visible. The leaf on his right hand was moving. A ripple ran the length of it; then, close beside its stalk, appeared a snout, a quivering trembling snout; then two bead eyes; then a trim velvet body. The Natterjack brought up his head again. No danger here, only a water Shrew-mouse. The Shrew-mouse took no heed of him. She swam the circuit of her leaf three times, dived once or twice, then climbed upon its surface. Here she performed her toilet. The goggle-eyes in no way disconcerted her. At length the Natterjack found words:

"Can you tell me," he said, politely, "where the French Frog has got to?"

The Shrew-mouse gave a little jump. She had been combing out her tail, which was important.

"The French Frog?" she said; "the French Frog? I'm sick of the French Frog. What between him and the Water Rat--and the queer thing is that neither of them seems to know that the other----"

"Of course, he's very fond of me," she added. "Every day he sings _at_ me, and so, of course, when he comes my way, I have to _ask_ him to sing; and the worst of it is, when I _ask_ him to sing, he _does_ sing."

"I think that might be cured," said the Natterjack, "if you can tell me where he is."

"Where did you see him last?" said the Shrew-mouse.

"Under the furze-bush," said the Natterjack.

"Under the furze-bush?" echoed the Shrew-mouse; "perhaps then I can find him. Swim behind me."

She slid so neatly off her leaf that not a drop of water reached her back. Then she commenced to paddle, her feet alternate, her square tail trailing, her nose and face awash. Twin ripples spread on either side of her, and, in between them, though their distance widened, the Natterjack swam stoutly, using his squat hind-legs alone, short jerky thrusts of them, and losing at each stroke.

He reached the shore two yards behind, but yet in time to see the last of her, a fluttering wavy tail-tip, which skimmed the summit of a stone and disappeared behind it.

This was disheartening. The Natterjack had spent his strength, and quick pursuit was out of question. He paused and stretched each limb in turn, scratched his chin doubtfully, and looked about him. He looked first at the water, then at the stone to fix it in his memory, and lastly at the bank above. Here his eyes rested, expressionless at first, lack-lustrous, but presently, with quickened interest, sparkling.

It must be, yes it was, the self-same furze-bush. He stared intently. It was the self-same stone. Perhaps the French Frog still was close at hand; perhaps the Shrew-mouse knew his hiding-place.

He flung his tiredness off him, and started running jauntily.

He had not far to go. Two scurries brought him to the stone, two scrambles to its summit.

There was the Shrew-mouse just below.

She was too occupied to note his coming. She coursed along the water's edge, her head dropped low, her face almost submerged. At times she paused and sniffed the air, her nose upturned and crinkly, her bristles fan-shape. Then she would drop her head again and probe the water.

The Natterjack watched quietly for a while, but soon impatience mastered him. He crept down and addressed her timidly.

"You said you might find the French Frog," he began.

"I have found him," said the Shrew-mouse; "he's down there--as usual."

"Down where?" said the Natterjack.

"Down in the water," said the Shrew-mouse, "down at the bottom of this pool, a good foot down."

"Would you mind asking him to come up?" said the Natterjack.

"I've asked him for five minutes," said the Shrew-mouse. "He must be fast asleep. I know he's there; I've seen his bubbles."

"How can we wake him?" said the Natterjack.

"You'd better dive," said the Shrew-mouse.

Now Natterjacks are bad enough at swimming; at diving they are hopeless.

"In you go," said the Shrew-mouse.

For very shame the Natterjack went in.

He swam to what he judged a likely spot, ducked down his head, his hands pressed tight against it, and lunged with both hind-legs. These, splashing on the surface, urged him on, but not one inch below.

Five times he tried, and five times his fat body, when half submerged, shot up and bobbed afloat.

The Shrew-mouse rocked with laughter.

"Again, Natterjack!" she cried. "Again! again!"

Shame-faced, he paddled back to shore.

"Be charitable, Shrew-mouse, be charitable. I did my best."

The Shrew-mouse looked at him inquiringly. "Never mind, Natterjack," she said, "I'll fetch him. It's hardly the right thing to do, but still----"

She climbed a ledge, drew all four feet together, and slithered off it eel-wise. She swam a yard and dived. The water closed like oil upon her going. Ten seconds passed and then she reappeared.

"He's coming, Natterjack," she said, and landed close beside him. The French Frog shot up like a cork, and half of him splashed clear above the surface. He took two strokes to reach the shore, and came out moist and shiny. He bristled with apologies--"It was unpardonable. He was altogether desolated. That a lady should have had to dive for him. Alas! he had been dreaming, and his dream, like all his dreams----"

The Shrew-mouse cut him short.

"The King Toad has heard your singing," she said, "and has commanded your presence. The Natterjack will guide you."

Ambition strove with gallantry, and, for a time, the French Frog wavered.

"And have I your permission, Shrew-mouse?" he said, at last.

"Please go," said she, "then come and tell me all about it." So both departed. The Shrew-mouse watched them out of sight, then swam to open water. She wished the Rat to see her next.

* * * * *

"Sire," said the Natterjack, "it is my privilege to inform you that I have been successful."

The King Toad made no answer. His eyes turned from the Natterjack to his companion, and, after an appropriate pause, he signed with one fore-foot.

The French Frog tiptoed forward.

"I have heard your singing," said the King Toad, "and your singing has annoyed me intensely."

There was a queer strained silence.

The Natterjack turned to conceal his face, and saw the Green Toad perched above him. He too was struggling to keep countenance. Beside him was the Salamander, wreathed in smiles.

"Your singing has annoyed me intensely," repeated the King Toad.

Words failed the French Frog, who could only gulp.

"Sire," he burst out at length, "it was a love-song."

"A love-song!" said the King Toad, "a love-song! and what nice-minded English frog would listen to _your_ love-song?"

The French Frog might have scored a point, but prudence checked him.

"I am a poor exile, Sire," he said, "and, when I sing, my heart is far away."

"So will your voice be, soon," said the King affably. "Come out, fire-toads." The fire-toads squirmed from underneath him.

The French Frog eyed them greedily. There are worse eatables than little toads.

"You may have the big one," said the King.

"Sire!" screamed Bombinatrix.

But she was too late. The French Frog's mouth had closed again, and all now visible of Bombinator was one distraught hind leg.

"Excellent," murmured the King Toad, and watched the French Frog narrowly. He was worth watching. He paled a dirty ochre, his eyes rolled horribly, he scratched his sides with both hind feet, he dragged at his own throat, he gasped and foamed and spluttered.

"Most interesting," said the King.

But there was more to follow. The French Frog straddled with his toes wide spread; then came an uncontrollable explosion, which flung him four feet skywards, and, at the height of this great leap, loosed Bombinator.

Two thuds were heard, the first a sounding, floppy one, the second farther off and duller.

"I thought that would happen," said the King Toad.

The French Frog slowly pulled himself together, climbed up the slope, and sat with mouth agape. His inside was red-hot.

The Natterjack burst into song, the Green Toad joined him, the Salamander laughed outright, but Bombinatrix, with a heavy heart, hopped silently away.

She was not long in finding him. He lay, as he had fallen, on his back, his hands and feet outspread, his poor throat twitching. But he still breathed, breathed in short, wheezy, gasping sobs, which made his whole frame shudder.

She crept up close and whispered. I cannot tell you what she said, but Bombinator caught the sense of it. He stretched his legs as far as they would go, and clasped his hands beneath his chin. This seemed to ease his breathing, and presently, from every pore, welled a bead-drop of moisture. He lay thus for an hour, and Bombinatrix mounted guard beside him.

At last he moved, but Bombinatrix checked him instantly. "Down, Toad of mine," she whispered, "down for your dear life!"

"What is it now?" he groaned.

"Ducks," whispered Bombinatrix, "Great, Fat, White Ducks!"

ANIMALS' NESTS (MARCH)

When a young friend of mine told me the other day that he was going birds'-nesting, and I told him in reply that I was going animal-nesting, I think that, if he had not been a very polite young friend, he would have laughed at me. As it was he laughed _with_ me--which was really very nice of him, for he must have been thinking all the time that I was laughing at _him_. But I was quite serious really. I _was_ going animal-nesting. I hear you ask at once, "What animal was it?" and I might tease you by saying, "Any animal, of course. When you go birds'-nesting you look for any kind of bird's nest _you_ can find, and when I go animal-nesting, I look for any kind of animal's nest _I_ can find." But I won't do that, because there are only a few animals' nests which can be found in the same way in which you find birds' nests. All animals make some kind of nest for their babies, and most of them make some kind of nest to sleep in too. They make them in such queer, out-of-the-way places, though, that it would be quite impossible for any boy or girl, let alone a man or woman, to find them; for the first thing to be done would be to choose the right hole in the ground, and the next thing to be done would be to crawl down it. Some animals, however, make nests which are not in burrows, and though these are not nearly so easy to find as birds' nests, they can be found if you know the sort of place to look for them in.

There are four animals in this country whose nests can be found without having to dig, and these are the mole, the squirrel, the dormouse, and the harvest-mouse. Three of these build their nests above the ground, and the fourth, "the little gentleman in black velvet," builds the ground above his nest. I am going to tell you something about this one (the mole) first, because his nest, I think, is the easiest to see. I expect most of you know those queer little heaps of earth which are sometimes dotted about the fields and are called mole-hills (I want you to keep these in your minds for the moment), and I expect those of you who have got a natural history book will have seen a picture of what is called a mole fortress. I want you to put that out of your mind altogether; it is quite wrong. Now, the little mole-hills never have a nest in them, and I am not quite sure why the moles make so many, but if you ever find a really big hill among the little ones, as big as six or seven of these heaped together, and grub down into it (it is quite soft, and you can do this with your hands if you don't mind getting dirty), you will find a mole's nest just about the place where you would find the grass growing if there was no hill at all. In May or June you may find the baby moles. Have a good look at them and put them back, for you won't be able to keep them alive, and the mother mole is sure to come back and look after them--when you have gone.

Another animal's nest which is easy to find is the squirrel's, but of course it is no use looking for this anywhere but in woods and places of that kind where you know there are squirrels about. A squirrel's nest is in a hole, or fork of a tree, and always, always out of reach. When it is in a fork of a tree it looks like an untidy bird's-nest, made of rather big twigs. It has a soft, warm lining, though, and, if you can get up to it, you may find the baby squirrels inside in June. If they are furry you can take them away, for then they are quite easy to bring up and tame.

Then there is the harvest-mouse's nest, which is the most beautifully made of all, and is usually to be found in cornfields, built some way up the stalks, and looking just like a bird's-nest except that it is quite round and has no opening that you can see. One can't very well walk about in a cornfield, but you have another chance of finding a harvest-mouse's nest in the hay-time, for they often build in the hay, and once I found one with babies in it, on a haycock, where it had been thrown without any one noticing it.

You have two chances, too, of finding a dormouse's nest, for this mouse builds one nest for the babies, and another to sleep in through the winter. Both of them are rather big compared with the harvest-mouse's nest, and they are generally made of moss and leaves, often honeysuckle leaves, which the mother dormouse seems to like, though I can't tell you why.

The dormouse often makes a sleeping-nest at the side of a path through a wood, and does not seem to fasten it very carefully, for one sometimes finds it in the middle of a path, as if the dormouse had turned over in his sleep and sent the whole thing rolling. It may be, though, that some hungry animal has pulled the nest out, and thinking the dormouse dead, preferred to take the chance of finding something alive and warm, and so left it.

If you ever find a sleeping dormouse, which will feel quite cold, you should take the nest and all and keep it somewhere out of doors. For if you bring it into a warm house, it will wake up before its proper time and very likely die; but if you leave it alone until the spring comes, it will wake up as Mother Nature meant it to, and you will have a pet which you will like much better than one which you looked at in a shop window, and could not resist buying.

Now there are other things for you to learn about animals' nests besides the kind of places in which you may hope to find them. To begin with, you must remember that an animal has not got the beautiful little nest-making tool which a bird has--I mean, of course, a beak. A bird's beak is used something like a knitting-needle, to thread the little wisps of hay and feathers and moss and things like that in and out and round about, until they stick where the beak tells them. I expect that animals use their teeth a little in the same way, but they use them more, I think, in biting leaves into strips, in softening hard stalks, and cutting thick grasses into thin ones, and I feel sure that they would find knitting very awkward, because of their thick lips. Most animals, instead of building a nest in front of themselves, build it round themselves. The first thing they do is to collect a little store of nest-material, and this they manage by biting and nibbling at anything which they think will be nice and soft, and carrying it away in their mouths. I expect most of you have seen a house-mouse's nest. It is usually made of scraps of paper and wool and fluff and other little rubbishes, which they can pick up behind the walls and under the floor. Sometimes, though, Mousey is not content with a common kind of nest, and gets into a hat-box and spoils a pretty hat, or into a drawer and spoils valuable papers. Once a mouse nibbled the date and the signature off a valuable paper of mine. That was all she took, but it gave me a great deal of trouble, for it was a legal paper, and it had to be done all over again. Sometimes Mousey chooses even queerer places. I will tell you three I have heard of; the first was a tin of gunpowder, the second was a box of cigars, and the third was a plum cake. The last sounds the nicest, doesn't it? But mousey is very fond of tobacco, and I have often seen her, when the house was quiet, nibbling at scraps of tobacco which I had dropped on the carpet.

The first thing that animals do, then, is to collect a little store of nest material. The next thing is to dive right into the middle of it. When they are well in the middle, they begin turning over and over, with a tug here and a push there, and little curls and flicks of the tail (the Harvest Mouse has the most useful tail of any of our animals, and that, I think, is one reason why his nest is so neat), until in a very short time they have scooped out a hollow in the ball of grass, or whatever it may be, and are sitting inside it. Sometimes they have to come out and get some more grass, and then the outside of the nest, which is quite springy, closes up like a little trapdoor behind them, and they have to make a fresh way in.

SOMETHING ABOUT BEETLES (APRIL)

I expect that most of you have seen some of the wonderful foreign beetles, whose wing-covers gleam and sparkle with colour as though they were studded with jewels; and some of you, perhaps, may have envied the small Black Folks down south, who have the chance of finding such beautiful things. But if you have a microscope, or even a magnifying glass, or if you know some one who will lend you either, you need not envy the small Black Folks at all, for here, in our own dear country, there are hosts and hosts of beetles as beautiful as any in the world. But there is always a something, isn't there? and the something in this case is that they are so very, very small. There is another something, and that is that nearly all of them have such very, very long names. The reason for this is that the young people were not the first to find them. If they had done so they would certainly have given them names which grownups could understand, just as the young people of long ago christened Tom-Tit and Jenny Wren, and Daddy Long-legs and Flitter Mouse. All these names have lived since they were first made, and they will live, I think, long after some much more learned names for the same things have been altogether forgotten.

Now I must tell you how to find these beautiful little beetles, and I think that you will be able to find them very soon after you have read these lines, for the spring-time will have come, and the May will have flowered, and there is nothing that the little beetles like better than May-buds. All you have to do is to find a May-tree (it doesn't matter if it is white or pink, and it needn't even be a May-tree so long as there is plenty of blossom on it) and hit one of the branches with a stick, and hold a butterfly-net, or an old umbrella, or a piece of newspaper, or even your hat (an old hat is best) underneath, and catch what falls from the branches. You will find all sorts of things, but among them there are sure to be some tiny long-snouted beetles which are called Rhynchophora. That is a dreadful name, isn't it? but I think that the English word "weevils" is just as ugly. Though they are very small indeed, you will see at once that they have very wonderful colours. Probably you will catch an emerald-green one, and a sky-blue one, and perhaps a little square-shaped scarlet one, which is not very uncommon, and there may come a red-letter day when you catch one of the most beautiful little beetles in the world, who is green and crimson and gold. I have done this twice myself.

There are so many different beetles in our country that no one has ever collected all of them. Most are very small indeed, like the weevils, but a few are quite big, and I am showing you pictures of some of the largest.