ed-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