The pond-snail was swimming with her pointed shell on her back. She stood right on her head in the water and made a boat of her broad foot, which lay level with the surface of the pond and supported the whole fabric. Then she stretched out her foot and the boat was gone and she went down to the bottom and stuck a whole heap of slimy eggs to the stalk of a water-lily. The pike came and laid an egg in a water-milfoil bush. The carp did the same; and the perch hung a nice nest of eggs in between the reeds where the warblers had built their nest. The frog brought her eggs, the stickleback had almost finished his nest and hundreds of animals that were so small that one could hardly see them ran about and made ready for their young ones. Just then, the eel put his head up out of the mud: "If you will permit me, madam ... I have seen a bit of the world myself...." Mrs. Reed-Warbler gave a faint scream. "I can't stand that person," she said to her husband. "He's so like the adder, who ate my little sister last year, when she fell to the ground as she was learning to fly. He has the same offensive manners and is just as slippery." "Oh," said the eel, "it's a great misfortune for me if I meet with your disapproval, madam, on that account. And it's quite unjust. I am only a fish and not the slightest relation to the adder, who took that little liberty with your sister, madam. We may have just a superficial resemblance, in figure and movement: one has to wriggle and twist. But I am really much more slippery. My name, for that matter, is Eel ... at your service." "My wife is hatching her eggs," said the reed-warbler. "She can't stand much excitement." "Thank you for telling me, Mr. Reed-Warbler," said the eel. "I did not mean to intrude.... But as I have travelled considerably myself, like you and your good lady, I thought I might venture to address you, in the hope that we may hold the same liberal opinions concerning the petty affairs of the pond." "So you are a traveller. Can you fly?" asked the reed-warbler. "Not exactly," said the eel. "I can't fly. But I can wriggle and twist. I can get over a good stretch of country, which is more than most fish are able to say. I feel grand in the damp grass; and give me the most ordinary ditch and you'll never hear me complain. I come straight from the sea, you know. And, when I've eaten myself fat here, I shall go back to the sea again." "That's saying a good deal," said the reed-warbler. "Yes," said the eel, modestly. "And just because I have seen something of the world, all this fuss about children in the pond here strikes me as a bit absurd." "You're talking rather thoughtlessly, my good Eel," said the reed-warbler. "I can see you have neither wife nor children." "Oh," said the eel, making a fine flourish with his tail, "that depends on how you look at it! Last year, I brought about a million eels into the world." "Goodness gracious me!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.