m the least information,
for none of them had ever been cooked and served upon silver dishes.

The old white snails were the grandest race in the world; of this they
were well aware. The forest had grown for their sake, and the castle or
manor house too had been built expressly that in it they might be cooked
and served.

Leading now a very quiet and happy life and having no children, they had
adopted a little common snail, and had brought it up as their own child.
But the little thing would not grow, for he was only a common snail,
though his foster mother pretended to see a great improvement in him.
She begged the father, since he could not perceive it, to feel the
little snail's shell, and to her great joy and his own, he found that
his wife was right.

One day it rained very hard. "Listen!" said the Father Snail; "hear what
a drumming there is on the burdock leaves--rum-dum-dum, rum-dum-dum!"

"There are drops, too," said the Mother Snail; "they come trickling down
the stalks. We shall presently find it very wet here. I'm glad we have
such good houses, and that the youngster has his also. There has really
been more done for us than for any other creatures. Every one must see
that we are superior beings. We have houses from our very birth, and the
burdock forest is planted on our account. I should like to know just how
far it reaches, and what there is beyond."

"There is nothing better than what we have here," said the Father Snail.
"I wish for nothing beyond."

"And yet," said the mother, "I should like to be taken to the castle,
and boiled, and laid on a silver dish; that has been the destiny of all
our ancestors, and we may be sure it is something quite out of the
common way."

"The castle has perhaps fallen to ruin," said the Father Snail, "or it
may be overgrown with burdock, so that its inmates are unable to come
out. There is no hurry about the matter. You are always in such a
desperate hurry, and the youngster there begins to take after you. He's
been creeping up that stem yonder these three days. It makes me quite
dizzy to look at him."

"But don't scold him," said the mother. "He creeps carefully. We old
people have nothing else to live for, and he will be the joy of our old
age. Have you thought how we can manage to find a wife for him? Do you
not think that farther into the forest there may be others of our own
species?"

"I dare say there may be black snails," said the old father, "black
sna