"My wife and I have the honour to bid you good-morning, gentlemen. We are delighted to observe that you lead your lives in a more mannerly way than most of the other inhabitants of the pond. We have suffered greatly at the sight of the extraordinary cruelty ..." he paused, caught a blue-bottle, and tossed it to his children in the nest ... "of the extraordinary cruelty that prevails in society here. It cannot but be extremely unpleasant for well-bred people to witness the cynical and unveiled brutality with which every one satisfies his app— ..." Here he seized a caddis-fly, ate it, wiped his mouth, and continued, "satisfies his appetite. You, gentlemen, are different. If you had wings, I should be inclined to believe that originally you did not belong to this company at all."
"Your presumption is absolutely correct," replied the carp, waving his fins complacently.
"You are quite right," said the mussel, yawning politely.
"I was born in another pond," said the carp, "but I must confess that I have no distinct recollection of it. I only know that they did not lead such a wild, brigand's life there as here. For instance, I don't think there were any fish but carp in the pond, which, of course, improved the tone, you know. No doubt it was a nobleman's carp-pond. We were fed five times a day and everything was removed that could inconvenience us in any way. Until I came here, I had never set eyes on such things as pikes, water-spiders or that horrible bladder-wort."
"It must have been idyllic there," said the reed-warbler. "May I ask, were there no reed-warblers?"
"Oh, yes!" said the carp, "I think they had permission to build in the reeds. And then there were a good many frogs, probably to cheer us up with their croaking."
"Then how did you come here?"
"A-ah," said the carp, "that's not an easy question for me to answer. You see, we came in a basket, I and a large number of my friends. And then we were tilted out into the pond. I can't think of any other reason than that they wished to improve the tone here. We had nothing to complain of where we were before. Did you hear anything about well-bred people in this place expressing such a wish?"
"No," said the reed-warbler. "It didn't happen in my time. But I have only been here since the spring."