ng and wanted more food. The
water-lily and the spear-wort had stopped quarrelling, for they had
nothing more to quarrel about. Both of them had lost their white
blossoms and their heads were full of seeds.

The reed-warblers' children were now so big that they had begun to leave
the nest and flutter about in the weeds. But they were not quite sure of
themselves and still dangled after their parents. They never went so far
away but that they could easily return to the nest; and they lay in it
every evening and fought for room and bit and kicked one another, while
their half-starved parents sat beside them and hushed them.

"Oh, mummy ... do get me that fly!" said one.

"I can't catch these horrid midges," said the second.

"Boo-hoo!... Boo-hoo!... The dragon-fly flew away from me!" said the
third.

"I daren't take hold of the daddy-long-legs," said the fourth.

But the fifth said nothing, for he was a poor little beggar, who always
hung his beak.

"We'll never make a proper reed-warbler of him," said the father.

And, when they were being drilled in flying and hopping and scrambling
in the reeds, or examined in singing, the fifth was always behind the
rest.

"We shall never be able to drag him with us to Italy," said the
reed-warbler.

And little Mrs. Reed-Warbler sighed.

In the water below, the duck splashed about with her grown-up
ducklings.

"The end is near," she said. "I am sure of it. I have a horrid
presentiment all over my body."

"What harm can happen to you?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "You don't
travel, so you're not exposed to as many dangers as the rest of us."

"One can never tell," said the duck. "I feel it in my back."

[Illustration]

Then she paddled on and quacked to her children with her anxious old
voice and wore a distressful look in her eyes.

One day something happened that set the whole pond in commotion.

The pike was suddenly hauled up out of the water.

The reed-warbler saw it himself. The pike hung and sprawled terribly at
the end of a thin line, flew through the air in a great curve and fell
down on the grass. At the other end of the line was a rod, and at the
other end of the rod a boy, who was crimson in the face with delight at
the big fish he had caught.

"It serves him right, the highwayman!" said the perch.

"Thank goodness, he's gone!" croaked the frogs.

And all the little roach and carp danced round the water with delight.

"He had not many friends," sa