By and by the frogs saw that the nest began to look round like a circle. Then pretty soon the mud wall became so high the builder had to bring her head and shoulders out of the water in order to put the mud in the right place.
Not a frog croaked. They were all too much taken up with what she was doing to spend time in that way.
After she had worked for some time she stopped and, looking around, said, "It's pretty hard work lifting and shaping so much mud!"
"Don't you think you should have waited until your mate was here?" asked Grandmother. "He could have helped you."
"I should say not!" said the stranger. "You don't know him. He is the laziest frog you ever saw. He never helps me build my nest. He just doesn't enjoy working. I always have to make the nest myself. Of course he is a dear fellow and I'm fond of him," she said hastily, "but he just won't work."
Then she went on with her nest, lifting handful after handful of mud from the bottom of the lake and piling it up on the round wall. When the wall was about four inches high and twelve inches across, she smoothed the inside with her hands, and then rubbed the bottom of the nest and the lower part of the wall with the underside of her body and feet. She paid no attention to the outside of the wall. That was left rough and uneven.
When she had finished her nest it looked like a mud bowl half full of water sitting in the pool. "Here," she said, as she climbed on the bank, "is where I shall place my eggs. I can then keep an eye on the polly-wogs and see that nothing harms them. They cannot get out of the nest."
Of course all the frogs had to see that nest. And every one of them said that it was most wonderfully made.
"You see," she said, as she showed them her hands, "all my fingers are largest on the ends. That is why I can handle the mud so well. Now I must have something to eat," she said as she began to look around for insects. "It gives one an appetite to work so hard."
As the frogs hopped away everyone was saying, "That is truly a wonderful nest!" Many of the mother frogs sighed and wished for one as good.