though tailless, revelled among the neem-trees’ harsh berries, while from the softened earth, in spite of the falling rain, the mynas were busy pulling out the carelessly jocund worms. Even the wretched babblers, who had hoped to raise a second brood of young, and whose nest has in an hour become a dripping pulp, hopped, and not unmirthfully, about. The peacocks came out and danced. Even the crow was festive. But the rain that washed the aloes clean has also soaked out from their lair among them the ringed snakes, so the mungoose is holding high carnival. But hark! Already a frog? — yes, a shrivelled batrachian who, for many sun-plagued weeks had been lying by in a dusty water-pipe, feels suddenly the rush of warm rain-water, and his dusty, shrunken shell is carried out into the aqueduct. With reviving strength he stems the tide, and is soon safely on the bank. Can it be true? and he plunges into the living water again, his shrivelled body — like that curious Rose of Jericho — plumping out as it greedily absorbs the grateful liquid; and soon the lean and wretched frog, whom a week ago a hungry crow would have scorned to eat (though a stomach-denying crow is as rare as a Parsee beggar), becomes the same bloated monster in yellow and green that last year harassed us with his importunate demonstrations of pleasure. “And for als moche as” he has thus cheaply attained to respectability, he is inflated with pride. Mandeville thanked God with humility for the keeping of the good company of many lords, but the frog unasked thrusts himself and his amours upon our notice, holding with the Saracens that man is only the younger brother of swine. We welcome the rain, but could do well without the frogs.
