The Pond

y stop. It's for your sake that I pipe my tune. Besides, you can see for yourself that I'm only joking. I'm tremendously glad of the children. It will be an honour and a pleasure to me to stuff them till they burst. Perhaps we might have been satisfied with three."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she said.

"So I am, dear, because of the other two. But, as I don't know which two those are, it makes no difference."

She put on a very serious face. But he caught a fat fly that was passing, popped it into her mouth and struck up so pretty a trill that she fell quite in love with him again.

[Illustration]

At that moment a deep sigh rose from the water under the bank.

"That came from a mother," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "I could hear that plainly."

"That's what it did," said a hoarse voice.

The Reed-Warblers peeped down and beheld a cray-fish, who sat in the mud staring with her stalked eyes.

"Dear me, is that you, Goody Cray-Fish?" said Mrs. Reed-W