of the reed.

CHAPTER VI

Summer

[Illustration]

The whole pond was alive.

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-water mussels, water-beetles and
daddy-long-legs, whirligigs and ever so many others.

There was the duck, who quacked at her ducklings, and the swan, who
glided over the water with bent neck and rustling wings, stately and
elegant. There was the dragon-fly, who buzzed through the air, and there
were the dragon-fly's young, who crawled upon the water-plants and ate
till they burst. But that did not matter; they just had to burst, if
they were to come to anything.

There was the bladder-wort, who had his innocent white flowers above the
water and his death-traps down at the bottom; the spider, who was still
his lodger and now had the whole ceiling full of eggs, and hundreds of
thousands of midge-grubs, who lay on the surface of the water and stuck
up their air-vessels and hurried down to the bottom the moment a shadow
fell over the pond. There were hundreds of thousands of midges, who
danced in the air, and there was the water-lily, who knew how beautiful
she was, and who was unapproachable for self-conceit.

There were many more, whom you could not count without getting dizzy.
And then there were the tadpoles, who were ever so many and ever so
merry. And you only had to take a drop of water and examine it through a
magnifying-glass to see how it swarmed with tiny little animals, who all
danced about and ate one another without the least compunction.

But just under the reed-warblers' nest there was a little May-fly grub,
who was in a terrible state of fright.

She had entered into conversation with little Mrs. Reed-Warbler one day,
when the latter had gone all the way down the reed to find food for her
five youngsters, who were simply insatiable and kept on crying for more.
Just at that moment, the May-fly grub had come up to the surface; and
now the bird's beak was exactly over her.

"Let me live," said she.

"That's what they all say," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "My children have to
live, too!"

[Illustration]

So saying she tried to snatch her. But the grub wriggled so and looked
so queer that she could not.

"Listen to me for a moment," said the grub; "then I'm sure that you
won't hurt me. I am so small and so thin and fill so little space in