The Pond

This was not because he really had anything to complain of. The sun was shining; there were flies in plenty; and no one was doing him harm. A little while before, a pretty girl,...

And the reeds swayed in the balmy wind and the nest swayed and the eggs swayed that lay in the nest and the dear little brown bird that sat on the eggs. Even the husband swayed....

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.

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...

There was no end to her nervousness and unreasonableness. Her husband simply could not satisfy her. If he brought her a fly, she shook her head and asked how could he think her...

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-wa...

No end of young had come out of the eggs and they filled the whole pond. Out in the middle it was quite green with millions of little water-weeds, which died and rotted and reek...

"Thank you," replied the mussel. "It has not disturbed my composure in the least. Generally speaking, nothing disturbs my composure. Only, if any one sticks something between my...

"They can stand on their legs as it is," said he, "for they nearly trample one another to death when I come along with a silly fly. I tell you, it's getting a bit difficult to p...

"Pretty well, thanks," replied the May-fly grub. "There was a roach, who wanted to eat me; and two caddis-grubs, who tugged at me; and a whirligig, who bit me in one of my legs....

The beeches were quite yellow with the heat; and the pond was overgrown with plants almost right up to the middle. All the tadpoles had turned into frogs; all the young animals...

The trees stood with bare branches. The leaves rustled over the earth or floated on the pond. The reeds were all cut down; the water-lily's leaves withered away, with stalks and...