"Oh, really?" said the mussel. "Upon my word, they did something of the sort about me too. But what they said was lies."
"What did they say?"
"There was a lot of rubbish about pearls."
"Oh, have you pearls? Wife! Wife! The mussel has pearls!"
"Not a bit of it," said the fresh-water mussel. "Do stop shouting like that. You can be heard all over the pond. If any one overheard you, I should be in danger of being fished up. Thank goodness, there are no pearls formed on me!"
"O-oh!" said the reed-warbler, in a disappointed tone.
"It's just the pearls the poets talk their nonsense about. They sing of how happy the mussel is with the precious pearl he guards, and all that sort of thing.... Do you know what a pearl is?"
"No," said the reed-warbler.
"It's a nasty, pushing parasite ... something like the double-animal that hurt the carp. When it comes into us, it hurts us, of course. Then we cover the brute with mother of pearl till it dies. And then it sits on our shell and plays at being a pearl."