“You don’t know everything,” replied the weasel, preparing to take a header, “and if you swim no better than you run, you haven’t much time left to learn in.”
With these words he plunged in. Conscious that something was wrong, Jock dived to the bottom and swam as hard and quietly as he could, in search of covert. But the weasel stuck to him, and was never very far behind. In desperation, Jock rose under a little mass of leaves that he had lifted from the bed of the stream, for he knew that his powers of diving were exhausted. Perhaps this little trick might have availed to save him, for the weasel was momentarily baffled, but his sharp eyes soon saw the leaves dispart, he guessed the cause, and Jock fled as Hector may have fled from Achilles round the Walls of Troy. This time he made for his home, and entered the burrow by the newly cleared door in the bank. It was a fatal mistake, for once his feet were on the land the weasel was master of the situation. He caught Jock at the point where the passage opened out by the nest, and killed him instantly with one bite behind the neck. Then he killed Mrs. Water-rat almost as quickly, and hurried away out of the burrow and on to the land feeling very pleased with himself, as he ran swiftly towards the rabbit burrows where he intended to make a fresh kill. So elated was he by the taste of blood, and the consciousness that he had been too quick for his harmless victims, that he ran carelessly in full view of the gamekeeper’s son, who was taking his first shooting lessons with a single-barrelled gun. The lad saw the weasel, and took accurate aim, so that the ferocious little animal did not survive his latest victims by more than five minutes. The dead body was picked up and nailed to the branch of the elm tree that served the gamekeeper as his vermin larder, and everybody was glad that the weasel’s career was ended.
But the larks that sang their hymns of praise to the sun, and the moorhen that lived so quietly in the reeds, and even the little bats that fluttered about at dusk round the edges of the river mourned Jock’s decease, and missed his cheerful presence when they passed the little doorway in the bank, from which he was accustomed to look out over the shining water and greet his many friends.
THE FLAMINGO
Some subtle sense of approaching spring stirred in the breast of the great mute Swan. He could not call aloud, and the low tone in which he spoke to his companion captives would not do justice to the occasion. So he raised himself to his full height, spread his immense wings, and darted across the pond, half-running and half-flying, and creating such a disturbance that the squirrels in the open-air cage some distance off raced to the top of their dead tree to see what was the matter.
On the pond the wigeon drake dived incontinently, and of the pink flamingoes all, save one, sought the banks, where they twisted their long necks into the shape of corkscrews, just to show their indignation. The remaining bird stood on one leg quite unconcerned, his neck in the shape of a capital S. He stared straight before him, and his glance seemed to light upon the excited Swan, and pass through him to some point behind the end of the world. The Swan was annoyed.
“This isn’t the time for dreaming,” he said, “on a fine April morning when the gardens are beginning to look their best.”
“I’m thinking, not dreaming,” said the Flamingo quietly.
“What a waste of time,” replied the Swan. “When I have nothing to do I preen my feathers. I never think. Isn’t this a pretty place; did you ever see anything as charming?”
This was too much for the Flamingo’s gravity. He turned his head, hid it in the feathers that covered the middle of his spine, and smiled. Then he withdrew his head, but feeling that some of the smile still lingered, put it down to the ground parallel with his foot.