It was true. There they were, still very small and weak, but really legs. The lizard and the tadpole had been too busy talking over how to make them grow to notice that they were already budding. They were still more excited when, soon afterwards, they saw near the front part of the tadpole’s body two more little buds; and the lizard was sure these would prove to be wings.
It was a terrible blow to them when they found these were not wings at all, but more legs. “Now it’s all over,” cried the tadpole, in despair. “It was bad enough not to have wings; but now that I’m getting legs this way, there’s no knowing where it’ll end.”
The lizard, too, was almost hopeless, until suddenly she remembered a crawfish she had known who had lost one of his legs in a fight, and it had hardly hurt him at all. She said perhaps she could pull the tadpole’s front legs off the same way.
He was quite willing for her to try, but at the first twitch she gave he cried out, “Ouch! that hurts!” so the lizard had to stop.
She still thought, however, that something could have been done about it if the tadpole had not been such a coward and had let her pull harder.
But worse was to follow.
One morning, before the lizard was up, the tadpole came wriggling over to the door of her house.
“Lizard, Lizard, come out here,” he cried. Then, as soon as she came out, he begged her to get a piece of eelgrass and measure his tail.
“I’ve been afraid it was shrinking for some time,” he said, “and now I’m almost sure of it. I have such strange feelings, too. Sometimes I feel as though I must have air, and I get up on a stone so that I’m almost out of the water, and only then am I comfortable.”
Hastily the lizard got the eelgrass and measured. Then they sat staring at each other in dismay. The tail was almost gone!