"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."