"I know what you mean," said the Snapping Turtle, "and you know what you mean, but I have to eat something, and if I am swimming under the water and a Duckling paddles along just above me and sticks his foot into my mouth, I am likely to swallow him before I think."
The Water-Adder saw that he was provoked by what she had said, so she talked about something else. "I think the Ducks spoil their children," said she. "They make such a fuss over them, and they are not nearly so bright as my children. Why, mine hatch as soon as the eggs are laid, and go hunting at once. They are no trouble at all."
"I never worry about mine," said the Mud Turtle, "although their mother thinks it is not safe for them all to sleep at once, as they do on a log in the sunshine."
"It isn't," said the Adder decidedly. "I never close my eyes. None of us Adders do. Nobody can ever say that we close our eyes to danger." They couldn't shut their eyes if they wanted to, because they had no eyelids, but she did not speak of that. "How stupid people are," she said.
"Most of them," remarked the Turtles.
"All of them," she said, "except us Adders and the Turtles. I even think that some of the Turtles are a little queer, don't you?"
"We have thought so," said the Mud Turtle.
"They certainly are," agreed the Snapping Turtle, who was beginning to feel much better natured.
"What did you say?" asked the Adder who, like all her family, was a little deaf.
"Ouch!" exclaimed the Snapping Turtle. "Ouch! Ouch!"