"Come along," said the Joblily, giving another punch with his fish-bone; and Larkin travelled on.
Presently they came to a log with something growing on it.
"What beautiful moss!"
"Moss, indeed!" said one of the Joblilies; "that is a colony of small animals, all fast to one stem."
"They have an easy time of it, I suppose," said Lazy Larkin; "they don't have to travel, for they cannot move."
"True, but these beautiful, transparent moss animals have to get their living by catching creatures so small that you cannot see them. They have great numbers of little fingers or feelers that are going all the time."
Larkin touched one, and it immediately drew itself in,—really swallowed itself; for these little things take this way of saving themselves from harm.
And so Larkin swam on, and found that it was a busy world beneath the lake. He saw mussels slowly crawling through the sand; he found that the pickerel, which he had supposed idle, was really standing guard over her nest, and fanning the water with her fins all day long, that a current of fresh water might be supplied to her eggs. And all the time the Joblilies kept singing—
"Work! work!
Never shirk!