s planted for their sake, and the
manor-house was there that they might be boiled and laid on a silver
dish.

Now they lived a very lonely and happy life; and as they had no
children themselves, they had adopted a little common snail, which
they brought up as their own; but the little one would not grow, for
he was of a common family; but the old ones, especially Dame Mother
Snail, thought they could observe how he increased in size, and she
begged father, if he could not see it, that he would at least feel the
little snail's shell; and then he felt it, and found the good dame was
right.

One day there was a heavy storm of rain.

"Hear how it beats like a drum on the dock leaves!" said Father Snail.

"There are also rain-drops!" said Mother Snail; "and now the rain
pours right down the stalk! You will see that it will be wet here! I
am very happy to think that we have our good house, and the little one
has his also! There is more done for us than for all other creatures,
sure enough; but can you not see that we are folks of quality in the
world? We are provided with a house from our birth, and the burdock
forest is planted for our sakes! I should like to know how far it
extends, and what there is outside!"

"There is nothing at all," said Father Snail. "No place can be better
than ours, and I have nothing to wish for!"

"Yes," said the dame. "I would willingly go to the manor-house, be
boiled, and laid on a silver dish; all our forefathers have been
treated so; there is something extraordinary in it, you may be sure!"

"The manor-house has most likely fallen to ruin!" said Father Snail.
"or the burdocks have grown up over it, so that they cannot come out.
There need not, however, be any haste about that; but you are always
in such a tremendous hurry, and the little one is beginning to be the
same. Has he not been creeping up that stalk these three days? It
gives me a headache when I look up to him!"

"You must not scold him," said Mother Snail; "he creeps so carefully;
he will afford us much pleasure--and we have nothing but him to live
for! But have you not thought of it?--where shall we get a wife for
him? Do you not think that there are some of our species at a great
distance in the interior of the burdock forest?"

"Black snails, I dare say, there are enough of," said the old
one--"black snails without a house--but they are so common, and so
conceited. But we might give the ants a commission to look out f