"Fairly. The eel almost caught sight of me; and I was nearly getting into the bladder-wort's prison; and the water-spider was after me before that. Otherwise, I'm all right."
"What's this now?" asked the reed-warbler.
"Oh," answered his wife, "it's a protegée of mine! A little May-fly grub. I promised that I wouldn't eat her. She is so happy at the thought of being grown-up ... and that only for a couple of hours, poor little thing!"
She said nothing about her intention of eating the grub when she was grown up; and the reed-warbler was seriously angry.
"What sentimental gammon!" he said. "It's unseemly for a woman with five children to commit such follies."
"I thought it so poetic to give her leave to live," said she.
"Fiddlesticks!" said her husband. "Poetry doesn't apply to one's food. If it did, we should all die of hunger. Besides you can't take a creature like that into consideration."
Thereupon he ran down the reed and hunted eagerly for the grub, to eat her.
But she heard what he said and had gone down to the bottom with terror in her little heart.