Ruth didn’t know, but she nodded her head in agreement.
“A bad thing,” repeated Mr. Bufo. “In the Spring, after Mrs. Bufo had laid her eggs, she gave me no peace. Of course, like all toads, she laid them in the water, but, instead of being reasonable about it, she was always asking me how she was to know them from the eggs Mrs. Rana and Mrs. Urodillo had laid. Theirs were in the water too.”
“Please, who is Mrs. Urodillo?” asked Ruth. “I know Mrs. Rana is a frog.”
“Mrs. Urodillo is a water salamander,” answered Mr. Bufo, not over pleased at being interrupted. “Now where was I? Oh, yes. Mrs. Bufo was afraid she wouldn’t know her own eggs. Well, I tried to argue with her.”
“‘Didn’t you lay yours in double strings?’ I asked, ‘and didn’t you with motherly care enclose them in thin but strong tubes?’ Of course she couldn’t deny it. ‘But I won’t know my own tadpoles,’ she kept insisting.”
“No wonder she was worried,” said Ruth. “Any one would want to know their own babies.”
“Mothers in our family never do,” declared Mr. Bufo. “They lay their eggs, and that’s the end of it. Mrs. Bufo knew that as well as I did. She only wanted something to worry about. All tadpoles are pretty much alike to begin with, but they don’t end alike. Toad egg tads always grow into toads; frog egg tads become frogs, and salamander egg tads will be salamanders and nothing else.”
All the while he talked Mr. Bufo had stopped every little while to swallow, not only air, but whatever in the way of insects came within his reach. So of course Ruth saw his tongue.
“Your tongue is just like Mr. Rana’s,” she said, after watching it for a few seconds.
“Our tongues may be alike,” agreed Mr. Bufo, “but there’s a vast difference in our legs. His are too long for any use, and his skin is so horribly smooth it gives me the shivers just to look at it. Of course I know I am not handsome, and that reminds me of some lines that have been written about me. Want to hear them?”