At Mrs. Frog’s House.
On the bank of a clear lake that lay near the edge of a great forest lived a family in a house all its own. This family consisted of Mr. Frog and Mrs. Frog and a number of Baby Frogs. They lived very happily. The books say that frogs are tadpoles at first, and the books are right; but this is another family of frogs, as you shall see.
In the rear of their house stretched a marsh in the shallow waters of which grew reeds, rushes, willows and water lilies. Here and there a bulging gnarled and knotty cypress knee raised its head above the water. Here and there rotted an old log, moss-covered and sodden. Here and there lay a block of wood left behind by the hewers, a tuft of grass or a mound of earth.
Mr. Frog and Mrs. Frog and all the Baby Frogs visited this marsh.
Mr. Frog and Mrs. Frog and all the Baby Frogs visited this marsh every night. They were fond of music and they gave nightly concerts. When the sun slipped down behind the distant pines and tamarisks, and when the stars came out to glisten in the heavens, the entire family left their home and sought the marsh.
Mr. Frog always swam out to a cypress knee that rose a few inches above the water. It was broad and flat and he seemed to like to lie on it.
Mrs. Frog used to sit on a log near by and all the Baby Frogs crowded around her and tried to cuddle up to her. There was not room for all, but the tiniest Baby Frog used to hop up on her back and lie there until it was time to go home.
One of the Baby Frogs never mingled with the rest but hid himself away in a tuft of grass. They said he was “odd.” Why he preferred the grass I cannot say. He was morose and taciturn and probably wanted to be by himself.
On dark nights the concert did not begin early. Mr. and Mrs. Frog and all the Baby Frogs remained quiet and watched Will-o’-the-Wisp flash his lamp about; or they listened to the cry of the witch-dog far out in the marsh.
But my story deals with the moonlight nights, and on moonlight nights the singing began early and lasted until midnight. Some people will tell you that frogs sing all night and they sometimes do; but only sometimes. These same people tell you that frogs croak, but I say they sing and you can understand and enjoy their music quite as much as some of the grand operas.
Mr. Frog usually began. He had a deep bass voice of which he was very proud and when he flung out a rich tremolo, every one else hushed. You could hear him ever so far up the lakeside, and Mr. Peckerwood said he heard him on the other side of the lake.
Mrs. Frog once had a well-trained contralto voice of which she was a trifle proud; but of late years she had so many babies to croon for that she got out of practice and could not sing as she once could. She knew how to sing and she knew she couldn’t sing. And this night she sang worse than usual—she seemed out of sorts.
The “odd” Frog who went away to himself sang whenever he wanted to and in the funniest way. He did not try to make music but just rattled like an alarm clock. They let him alone because he was “odd.”
Another little Frog tried to sing, but he couldn’t. You would have laughed, I am sure, to have heard him try. His voice sounded like a piccolo into which someone was blowing who did not know how to play.
Another Baby Frog had a splendid tenor voice, but he was always trying to sing as his papa sang. The result was that he injured his tenor voice without ever learning to sing bass. People very often harm themselves by trying to do what they cannot do and by leaving undone that which they can do.
The other singer was a Baby Frog with a beautiful soprano voice. And she sang, and sang her very best, whenever she was called on. Her singing was the talk of the whole neighborhood and, at night, when all the Baby Frogs were asleep, Mr. and Mrs. Frog used to talk of putting by something with which to send her abroad and have her voice cultivated. Whether they ever did so or not I cannot say.
The night of which I am telling you, Mr. Frog jumped into the water with a plunk and swam ashore, the rest following him. They returned home and Mrs. Frog soon had all the little Frogs tucked away in bed. Mrs. Frog was restless and nervous, for some reason. She would pick something off the dresser and lay it down again, mechanically. She would move a chair there, and in a moment set it elsewhere. She would fold her hands and sit down only to jump up in a few minutes and go hurriedly to do something quite unimportant.
Meantime Mr. Frog, who had been out, came stumbling in quite angry and demanded to know why the children had not brought in the kindling for the morning’s fire, saying that he should not be left everything to do. He did not notice the pained expression on Mrs. Frog’s face—people fail to see these things, sometimes—and he busied himself in closing up the house and fastening the doors and windows, after Mrs. Frog had shown him the kindling wood in the shadow of the ingle. Mrs. Frog retired, but Mr. Frog lay with his head in the doorway until daylight, and some say that he slept with one eye open. How any one found out I cannot tell, because Mr. Frog’s house was dark as pitch and only Mr. Owl could have seen; and Mr. Owl is too wise to tell anyone if he did. The reason Mr. Frog guarded the door is because Mr. Garter-snake lived in the neighborhood and Mr. Garter-snake is a prowler and likes to feast on Baby Frogs whenever he can find them. Mr. Garter-snake goes home at daylight and never ventures out unless it is going to rain, when he crosses the road in front of people to warn them to seek shelter. At daylight Mr. Frog turned in and slept until high noon. A bright fire was blazing on the hearth and Mrs. Frog was fixing breakfast, and the way she handled the skillets and spiders and sauce-pans, and at the same time urged the little Frogs to get ready for breakfast, was a caution.
Breakfast over and the things cleared up, Mrs. Frog was still restless. Sit still she could not. The Baby Frogs irritated her. She would go out and look about her in front of the door a moment, only to hurry back again for nothing. Her face was pale and her eyes shone unusually. Once she thought if she could scream it would do her great good. She was looking and acting strangely, but Mr. Frog did not notice anything. She announced her intention of going to visit Mrs. Rabbit who lived in the briar patch across the lake. Mr. Frog was a little surprised but made no objection, only observing that he hoped she would be home before sunset as he could do nothing with the Baby Frogs when they got sleepy; and that Mr. Moccasin-snake would be on the lookout for his supper as soon as it was dark.
Mrs. Frog put on her things and powdered her face. She looked at herself in the mirror a moment and then feverishly rushed to the bank and plunged in with a ker-plunk that could be heard a long distance. She kept deep under the water and would first swim this way and then that way; now to the right and then to the left, and she came to the surface a good distance from where she entered the water so that Mr. Moccasin-snake, if he had been on a log in the sun waiting for her, could not locate her. She looked back and saw Mrs. Turtle and Mr. Turtle asleep on a half-floating cottonwood stump, and then she struck out across the lake.
—put on her things and powdered her face.
She had not gone far when she began to feel better. Her nervousness and fever left her. She enjoyed a sense of freedom and liberty, and the cool, clear waters were as a health-giving and soothing anodyne to her. The sense of smothering and confinement which she found so oppressive at home had left her, and her spirit expanded and reveled in its new-found independence and she only regretted that Mr. Frog and the Baby Frogs were not with her to enjoy her raptures.