XIV
THE FROG WHO TRAVELLED
Once upon a time there lived in this world a frog. She used to sit in a swamp and catch mosquitoes and midges, and in the spring used to croak loudly in company with her friends. And but for an event which occurred she would have lived happily her whole life through — provided, of course, a stork had not eaten her.
One day she was sitting on a crooked branch which stuck out of the water, and was revelling in a warm, slight drizzling rain.
"Ah me, what beautiful damp weather today!" she thought. "What a delight it is to live!"
The drizzle damped her striped polished back, and the raindrops trickled down under her belly behind her paws, which was extraordinarily pleasant — so pleasant that she almost gave a croak. But luckily she remembered that it was already autumn, and that frogs don't croak in the autumn — the spring is the time for that — and had she croaked she might have lost her "frogly" dignity. So she kept quiet and continued to take her ease.
Suddenly a thin, intermittent, whistling noise resounded in the air.
There is a species of duck which, when it flies, makes a singing, or rather a whistling, sound with its wings as they cleave the air. "Phew, phew, phew, phew !" sounds through the air when a covey of such ducks fly high
above us, although the birds themselves are invisible, so
270
