But up in the tall trees the crow-wives sat on their eggs; and on the cliffs the eagles’ consorts lay brooding.
Everywhere they were busy preparing for the babies; but not everywhere was there so pretty a family-life as in the bushes in the wood.
True, Mrs. Fox had her hole deep down in the hillside, where her youngsters lay as snug as in their grandmother’s chest of drawers. But the timid hare dropped her young ones in the ditch and had no notion where their unnatural father was gobbling his evening cabbage.
And the cuckoo flew round restlessly and slipped his eggs stealthily into the others’ nests and cried most bitterly because he could never, never build a home for himself. Nor was the snail much better off; for she could do no more than make a hole in the ground, put her eggs into it and commend them to Providence.
The little brown mice had their parlours full of tiny, blind children, who could never wish for kinder or more thoughtful parents. But Goody Mole, down in the earth, had to eat her own dirty husband as soon as she had had her babies, lest he should eat the little innocents for his lunch. And the gnat-husbands danced heedlessly in the evening air, as though they had nothing better to do, while their respective spouses, in great affliction, laid their eggs in the water.
But the brown frog sat by the ditch-side and wrung her hands in speechless horror at the strange tadpole-children which she had brought into the world.
And the sun shone and the rain fell on those who were comfortable indoors and on those who had to take things as they came. Goody Mole worked for two, like the decent widow that she was; and the hare suckled her young so that they might gain strength quickly and leap away from the eagle and the fox. The cuckoo uttered his sorrowful note among the tall trunks of the forest; and Mother Gnat let her eggs sail the pond for themselves, since that was all that she could do for them, after which she settled in the stag’s ear and helped herself to a drop of blood to repay her for her exertions.
But the Prince of Summer was with them all. He knew of the smallest gnat and forgot not a flower in the meadow:
“It is well!” he said.
And, every day that passed, his purple cloak beamed, the golden girdle around his loins blazed, the red rose in his girdle glowed.