Left to herself, the little tadpole dropped from the lily leaf and swam about in the water. In a day or two the head and mouth appeared, and funny, frilly breathing gills grew out from her sides. Then these went away and inside gills grew. A hard little beak grew on her mouth, just the thing for nibbling leaves and stalks. Now she spent all the day eating vegetable dinners and growing. How fast she grew, to be sure!
Mrs. Frog came one day to see how she looked. "Do you call that a frog?" she asked Mr. Frog scornfully. "Whoever saw a frog with a tail? Or eating leaves? Or breathing like a fish?"
"My dear, think back," said Mr. Frog. "Have you no memory of a time in your youth when we all swam together in the water, never wishing to go up on the land? You had a lovely long tail in those days. And do you not remember how sweet those green things tasted to us?"
A puzzled look came into Mrs. Frog's eyes, and a dim remembrance flashed across her brain.
"Oh, well, I shall watch," she said.
So every day Mrs. Frog jumped into the pool and swam round the little tadpole, watching the changes that took place. Soon she saw the hind-legs begin to grow. Then one day the tadpole left off eating, and startling changes began to take place. The tail dwindled away, giving up its strength to feed the body; the horny beak dropped off; the mouth widened and widened, till it went nearly round the head; the tongue grew big; the eyes and the front legs came out through the skin. Day by day the changes went on, and Mrs. Frog was at last convinced that the little tadpole was really a frog.
When she saw the little creature rise up to the surface and swim to the shore, breathing as frogs breathe, and when she saw her jump up on the land and catch a fly and eat it, she went home.
"You were right, after all," she said to Mr. Frog.
"Of course I was," said Mr. Frog.