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CHAPTER V
The Bladder-Wort

Little Mrs. Reed-Warbler's babies were now expected any day.

There was no end to her nervousness and unreasonableness. Her husband simply could not satisfy her. If he brought her a fly, she shook her head and asked how could he think her capable of eating immediately before the most important event in her life. If he brought her none, she said it was evidently his intention to starve her. If he sang, it was unbearable to listen to him. If he was silent, she could plainly see that he no longer cared for her.

"You don't appreciate me as I deserve," he said. "You ought to be married to the eel for a bit, or to the cray-fish's husband; then you would know what's what."

"And you ought to have taken the spider," said she. "Then you would have been eaten."

"Dear lady! Dear lady!" cried the cray-fish from down in the mud.

"Well?" said the reed-warbler.

"I can't stand this!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"I only wanted to ask you, dear lady, not to forget me and those shells," said the cray-fish.

"I won't have anything to do with an odious woman like you, who eats her own children," replied Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"Oh, dear!.. Surely, ma'am, you don't believe that mean carp who was here the other day? A horrid, malicious fellow like that! He doesn't even belong to the pond, you know. He's a regular man's fish. They only put him here to fatten him up and eat him afterwards … I saw it myself last year; he was a mere spawn then; now he has grown big and stout on men's food; and he has plenty of time, too, since he doesn't have to work like another; and so he runs round and slanders poor people and robs them of the sympathy of kind ladies like yourself."

"Stop your chattering, Goody Cray-Fish," said the reed-warbler. "You'll drive my wife quite silly with your silly talk."

"Oh, dear!.. Well, I beg a thousand pardons," said the cray-fish. "I only want to remind the lady about the egg-shells."

Then she went backwards into her hole.

"Why will you think so much about all that rabble?" said the reed-warbler to his wife. "There are other things in the world besides cray-fish and eels and spiders. Find something pretty to look at. That would do you good just now."

"Show me something," she said, languidly.

"Look at the beautiful white flower down below there," said he. "See how charmingly he rises above the water. He surely can be neither a robber nor a cut-throat."

It was really a beautiful white flower that grew up from the bottom of the pond on a long, thin stalk and looked exceedingly sweet and innocent. Mrs. Reed-Warbler glanced at him kindly:

"What's your name, you pretty flower?" she asked. "May I look at you a little?"

"Look as much as you please," replied the flower. "My name's Bladder-Wort, and I have no time to waste in talking to you. I have things to attend to and must hurry."

Mrs. Reed-Warbler stretched her neck and peeped down into the water.

"That horrid spider has her nest between his leaves," she said.

"Well, the bladder-wort can't help that," replied her husband. "It's a flower's fate to stand where he stands and take things as they come. He sucks his food calmly out of the ground, has no stains on his flowers, and no blood on his leaves. That's what makes him so poetic and so refined."

"Hush!" she said. "They are talking together."

And talk together they did, with a vengeance.

"Have you caught anything?" asked the bladder-wort.

"Indeed I have," replied the water-spider. "I don't go to bed fasting. This is a good time of year for water-mites, and so I don't complain. And how have you done?"

"Nicely, thank you," said the bladder-wort. "I have caught a hundred and fifty midge-grubs and forty carp-spawn this afternoon. But I'm not satisfied. I don't believe I could ever be satisfied."

"What's that he's saying!" whispered little Mrs. Reed-Warbler, and looked at her husband in dismay.

"Be quiet," he said. "Let us hear more."

The spider went into her parlour, hung seven eggs from the ceiling, swallowed a mouthful of air and came out again.

"You're really a terrible robber," she said. "If it wasn't that I had come to lodge with you, I should be furious with you. Why, you take the bread out of my mouth!"

"Nonsense!" said the bladder-wort. "Surely there's plenty for the two of us! I am quite pleased to have a lodger who drives the same trade as myself. It gives one something to talk about."

"It's really odd that a flower like yourself should have turned robber," said the spider. "It's not in your nature, generally speaking."

"What am I to say?" replied the flower. "These are hard times. There are a great many of us, and the earth is quite exhausted. So I hit upon this and it goes swimmingly. But then I have got my apparatus just right. Would you like to see it?"

"Very much," said the spider. "But you won't hurt me, will you?"

"Be easy," said the bladder-wort, with a laugh. "You're too big for me. Run along one of my stalks and I'll explain the whole thing to you."

The spider crept cautiously for some way down the branch and then stopped and looked at a little bladder there.

"That's tight," said the bladder-wort. "That is one of my traps. I catch my prey in them. I have a couple of hundred of them."

"So you can eat two hundred water-mites at a time?" said the spider, enviously.

"I can. If they come. But I'm never so jolly lucky as all that. Now just look: beside the bladder you will see a little flap, which is quite loose. When some fool or other knocks up against it, it goes in and – slap, dash! – the fool tumbles into the bladder. He can't get out; and then I eat him at my leisure."

"Do you hear?" whispered Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"Yes," said the reed-warbler, with a very serious face.

The spider could not resist fumbling at the flap with one of her legs:

"Ow!" she yelled suddenly.

She darted back with a jerk and the leg remained caught in the bladder. It was drawn inside in a twinkling and the flap closed and the leg was gone.

"Give me back my leg, please," said the spider, angrily.

"Have I your leg?" asked the bladder-wort. "Well then, you must have touched the flap. What did you do that for, dear friend? I made a point of warning you!"

"You said I was too big."

"So you are, worse luck! But, of course, I can easily eat you in bits, like this."

"It's not nice of you, seeing that you're my landlord," said the spider. "But as I have seven legs left, I suppose I must forgive you."

"Do, dear friend," said the bladder-wort. "I must tell you, I am not really master of myself when those flaps are meddled with. Then I have to eat what is inside of them. So be careful next time!"

"You may be sure of that," said the spider. "One has to be cautious with a fellow like you. Would you think it indiscreet if I asked you what my leg tastes like?"

"Oh, well," said the bladder-wort, "there wasn't much on it. For that matter, I've finished, in case you care to see what's left of it."

Just then the flap was opened, and a tiny little hard stump was flung out into the water.

"Is that my leg?" asked the spider.

"Don't you recognise it?"

The bladder-wort laughed contentedly. The spider stood and looked at the stump for a little while. Then she said good-night and limped sadly into her parlour.

"Good-night," said the bladder-wort, pleasantly. "And good luck to your hunting in the morning."

"I shall never survive this," said little Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

But, at that moment, she felt something alive under her:

"The children!" she screamed.

She was up on the edge of the nest in a second. On the opposite side sat her husband, watching just as eagerly as she.

One egg was quite in two and one of the others was burst. A wee, blind, naked youngster lay in the nest; and from the other egg protruded the dearest little leg of a chick.

"Did you ever see anything like it?" cried she. "Isn't it charming?"

"Delightful!" said he.

Then they began carefully to peck at the other eggs. And, inside, the young chicks pecked with their little beaks and five minutes later, they were all five out.

"Help me to clear up," she said.

Out flew the shells, on every side, down into the water.

"God bless you, kind lady!" cried Goody Cray-Fish from down below.

She was out for an evening stroll. But no one heard her. The reed-warblers were mad with delight over their children and had no thought for anything else in the world.

"What are you thinking of?" said the husband. "They'll perish with cold. Sit on them at once!"

And she sat on them and covered them up and peeped at them every moment.

But he stayed up half the night, singing, on the top of the reed.

CHAPTER VI
Summer

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!"

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 a stomach."

"Well, what is it?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"I have lived here a long time," said the grub. "I have heard you talk to your husband and to the cray-fish and the eel and the spider. It was all so beautiful, what you said. I am certain that you have a good heart."

"I don't know about my heart," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "But I know I have five hungry children."

"I am a child myself," said the grub. "And I should so awfully like to live till I grow up."

"Do you think that life is so pleasant?"

"I don't know. I am only a child, you see. I crawl about down here and wait. When I am grown up, I shall have wings and be able to fly like you."

"You don't surely imagine that you're a bird?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"Oh, no! I certainly don't aim so high as that. I shall just become a May-fly."

"I know them," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "I have eaten lots of them. They taste very good."

"Oh, well, in that case, do wait for me to grow up, before you eat me. I shall only live for a few hours, you know, when I get my wings. I shall just have time to fly once round the pond and lay my eggs in the water. Then I must die. And then you may eat me and welcome. But let me go now. And tell your husband also. He has been after me twice."

"Very well," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler, "though it's foolish of me. You'll probably cheat me and let someone else eat you first."

"I shall do my best to escape," said the grub. "And, now, thank you ever so much."

Before the grub had done speaking, little Mrs. Reed-Warbler was up in the nest again, with six midge-grubs, which she had caught in one bite. Her husband was there too with a dragon-fly, which the children tore to pieces and ate up amid cries of delight.

"There's nothing the matter with their appetites or with their voices either," he said. "If only they could shift for themselves! I am as lean as a skeleton."

"And what about me?" said she. "But the children are thriving and that is the great thing."

He sighed and flew away and came home and flew away again; and so it went on till evening. Then they both sat wearily on the edge of the nest and looked out across the smooth pond:

"It is curious how the life exhausts one," she said. "Sometimes, when I feel thoroughly tired, I can almost understand those animals who let their children look after themselves. Did you notice the eel the other day? How fat and gay he is."

"Are you talking of me, madam?" asked the eel, sticking his head out of the mud.

"Oh, you're always there!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"More or less. One has to wriggle and twist."

"Have you any news of your children?"

"No, thank goodness!"

"Oh, really?" said the perch. "I have an idea that I ate a couple of them at breakfast… Excuse me for being so frank!"

"Not at all, not at all!" said the eel. "The family is large enough even so."

"How on earth did they come up here from the sea?" asked the roach.

"Just as I did, I imagine," said the eel. "They've got scent of something to be made here; and two or three miles are nothing to them."

"Heigho!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"Are you sighing because of all this fuss with the children? Well, madam, what did I tell you?"

"Not at all," replied Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "I could never behave like you."

"One has one's duties," said the reed-warbler. "And the loftier one's station in life, the heavier the duties."

"Thank goodness, then, that I am of lowly station," said the eel. "I have a capital time in the mud."

"Then, again, one is interested in preserving a certain amount of poetry in the world. There is plenty of rabble, plenty of ugliness, I admit. All the more reason why we higher animals should do something to promote the ideal. And I can't imagine anything more ideal than a father's labours on behalf of his family, even though they do become rather fatiguing at times."

"You're tremendously up in the clouds to-day, Mr. Reed-Warbler," said the eel. "Every one to his taste. But, as for poetry, I must confess that I have not seen much of it in my life. And yet I have wriggled and twisted about the world a good deal. The great question, everywhere, is eating and eating and eating. And those who have children to care for are the worst robbers of the lot. Good-bye."

"That's a disgusting fellow," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "It was very nice of you to give him a piece of your mind. I quite agree with you. Besides, I myself performed a really fine action to-day."

She ran to the reed and looked into the water:

"Are you there, my little grub?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you," said the May-fly grub.

"And how are you?"

"Fairly. The eel almost caught sight of me; and I was nearly getting into the bladder-wort's prison; and the water-spider was after me before that. Otherwise, I'm all right."

"What's this now?" asked the reed-warbler.

"Oh," answered his wife, "it's a protegée of mine! A little May-fly grub. I promised that I wouldn't eat her. She is so happy at the thought of being grown-up … and that only for a couple of hours, poor little thing!"

She said nothing about her intention of eating the grub when she was grown up; and the reed-warbler was seriously angry.

"What sentimental gammon!" he said. "It's unseemly for a woman with five children to commit such follies."

"I thought it so poetic to give her leave to live," said she.

"Fiddlesticks!" said her husband. "Poetry doesn't apply to one's food. If it did, we should all die of hunger. Besides you can't take a creature like that into consideration."

Thereupon he ran down the reed and hunted eagerly for the grub, to eat her.

But she heard what he said and had gone down to the bottom with terror in her little heart.