"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."
"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."