“But I don’t think worms do harm.”
“If they don’t, it is because we eat them,” the peewit retorted. “If we didn’t eat them, there would be too many of them, and then, of course, they would do harm.”
“Well, when I grow up,” said Tommy Smith, “I will have peewits in my garden as well as frogs, and—Oh! but do you agree with frogs?” he asked, for this was an important point.
“Young frogs agree very well with us,” said the peewit. “So it comes to the same thing, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said Tommy Smith. “Not if the old ones don’t.”
“As for the old ones,” said the peewit, “we leave them alone. They are too big to be interfered with. So, you see, that’s all right too.”
Tommy Smith didn’t feel quite so sure about this. He couldn’t help thinking that perhaps the peewits ate the little frogs. But, just as he was going to ask them this, he remembered that if he didn’t make haste home, he would be late for dinner. Of course, as soon as he began to think about his own dinner, he forgot all about the peewit’s, and said good-bye at once. So off he ran. The mother peewit just nodded to him as she sat on her eggs, but the father peewit rose up into the air again, and flew round him, and swished his wings, and tumbled about, and cried, “Pee-wee-eet! pee-wee-eet!” and Tommy Smith felt quite sure that he meant “Good-bye, good-bye.”