III
MRS. FROG CHANGES HER DRESS
"Also, it is said that ages and ages ago Mrs. Frog and her family dwelt at the bottom of the sea."
"In the ocean?" queried surprised little Kingfisher, who was listening to all that Professor Crane could tell him.
"Yes, in the great salt water," replied Professor Crane, as he shifted his position and stood on the other leg. "Far deeper it was, too, than this pond."
For the learned Crane and little Kingfisher were spending a quiet hour under the shade of the wild orange trees, on the shores of a narrow lagoon. It was a hot, still day, and they were each of them resting after a morning's exertion. Professor Crane was always a talker after dinner, for he knew much and was sociable. He could discourse by the hour if any one would listen; and if nobody was disposed to heed him, he would meditate by himself. But just now he had an alert and inquisitive companion, for if Kingfisher loved two things in the world, one was to hear all the scandal, and the other was to pick feathers out of the back of a crow as he flew.
But apparently Professor Crane had decided to tell no more, for he rested his long bill on his breast, and let his eyes close to a narrow slit. This made him look infinitely wiser than he really was; but like a good many talkative persons he knew the value of waiting to be asked.
Kingfisher eyed his friend earnestly and opened his mouth several times to speak, but shut it again. Finally, however, thinking that Professor Crane had forgotten what he was saying, he piped out:
"How strange!"
And that stirred the venerable scholar to resume his narrative.
"Yes, strange indeed; yet nothing so wonderful after all. Nothing is past belief if you have studied long enough, and I have had signal advantages. It was, you may be pleased to know, a relative of mine, a Doctor Stork, who had perched all his life on the chimney of a great university in Belgium, who told me the truth about the frog. Of course, that is nothing to you, as you are not versed in the universities. But that's not your fault. At any rate, as I was saying, Mrs. Frog lived in the sea and had a palace of coral and pearl. She was very much larger than she is now, and was of a totally different color. She was red as the reddest coral, and her legs were as yellow as gold. Very striking, she was; and her voice was a deep contralto. But she was never content with her home, and couldn't decide whether she wanted to be in or out of the water. That's the way with all inferior characters. Men, you observe, are given to such traits of indecision, never being content where they are.
"Mrs. Frog, for all the pleasures of her coral hall, found it pleasant to sit on the rocks and stare at the land. And the more she stared, the more she wished to go ashore. But she was built for swimming, you know, and, for the life of her, she couldn't get over the sands."
"How on earth did she learn?" put in Kingfisher.
"Necessity and, as I might say, emergency," Professor Crane replied. "One day she let the waves carry her high and dry on the beach, trusting to another wave to take her back. But the other wave never came. She had come on the very last roller of the high tide. By and by she saw two eyes glaring at her from under the grass. It was probably a snake that was after her. Then, because she had to, she got back to the water. That's the way, you know. What folks have to do they generally accomplish, but until they're frightened into it they generally stand still."
"True, true," Kingfisher agreed. "I was afraid to fly when I was a baby. The last to leave the nest was myself, and finally my father pushed me out. I flew, of course, and never knew how I learned."
"Same with Mrs. Frog," added Professor Crane. "She got there. But the knowledge that she could hop if she wanted to was her undoing. She was never at home when she was wanted, and if Mr. Bullfrog had not watched the eggs in her place, there would have been no more frogs to talk about. At last he grew as neglectful as she was, however, and all the frogs caught the madness. That's when they took to tying their eggs up in packages and leaving them to care for themselves."
"How careless!" Kingfisher thought, as he recalled the hours that his wife spent sitting on hers, and what enemies would get them if he did not perch on guard.
"But the frogs got all the dry land they wanted. The sea turned itself into one great wave and spilled all over the mountains, you know. Yes, that was the time the moon changed from a golden dish to a silver platter. Some say it was from a pumpkin to a green cheese. But the weight of authority, the preponderance of learning is on the side of the silver platter."
"The preponderance of what?" interrupted Kingfisher. For although he knew what Professor Crane meant, he felt it was a compliment to him to ask for a repetition of these handsome words.
But Professor Crane went right on, which is the proper thing to do.
"And when the water went back where it belonged, it went farther than ever before. Half of the earth was high and dry that formerly had been under water. And Mrs. Frog was on that half."
"How terrible!" his listener exclaimed. "And how uncomfortable she must have been!"
"I should say she was!" Professor Crane agreed. "It was hotter, too, than fire. In fact she was destined to spend a long time regretting her previous state, while she sweltered, high and dry.
"The desert, you know, is the home of competition."
Professor Crane waited for this observation to sink in, for he felt that it was one of the best he had ever made.
"I mean that it is the worst place to live because everybody else wants you to die. That's what competition is, my friend Kingfisher. And on the sandy desert it is that way.
"There wasn't drinking water enough to go around, and the plants and trees, because they could burrow down and find a few drops, had the best of it. They stored it up, too, inside of themselves, and then, to keep people from breaking in for a drink, they threw out every kind of needle and thorn you can think of.
"But they grew beautiful flowers, and Mrs. Frog said that these reminded her of corals. The cactus flowers were indeed her only consolation, and she would sit under them all day. She didn't dare to hop out on the sands, for the birds were sure to see her and eat her, and so she took to running her tongue out and catching what she could in that way."
"Very convenient, I'm sure," Kingfisher observed. "I wish I could do it myself. It would save me much gadding about."
"Yes, my young friend, it would; but you'd never be patient enough. And Mrs. Frog is just so much patience on a lily pad. It's her whole life.
"She learned patience, you may be sure, on that desert, and her enemies were so many that she feared for her life every time she ventured out from under the cactus blossom. So she only went out at night and was, even then, careful about getting into the moonshine.
"Poor thing; she nearly starved to death, and grew thinner and thinner until her beautiful figure was gone. Then her skin shriveled into creases, and she finally got the leathery look that she has to-day."
"And how did she change her color?" Kingfisher begged to know.
"I don't think I care to tell you," said Professor Crane, with a sudden change in his voice.
This produced great surprise in little Mr. Kingfisher, for he never knew the Professor to withhold anything. Usually he was only too eager to load you with facts. So the small bird kept silence very respectfully, not knowing just what to say.
"You are yourself very saucy, and full of your foolishness," the wise Crane finally observed, "and you are not likely to believe what I tell you. But you can make what you choose of it, and it may do you good to know."
Professor Crane cleared his throat, and wagged his long bill up and down several times, much as a truly bearded professor strokes his chin in delivering the hardest part of his lecture. Then he coughed, for that is effective, too, and changed from his left foot to his right.
"Well," he resumed, "she prayed to the Man in the Moon, as that was the only thing that she knew to do, and begged him to give her a bog.
"'Just a bog, or a piece of a swamp, Mr. Moon,' she kept saying, 'even a few inches of water will do,' and after she had done this to every full moon for a year, and nothing had come of it, she changed her tune."
Kingfisher looked startled. He had personally the greatest respect for the Moon. He had heard much evil about it, however, and was not a little cautious of expressing his views on the subject.
"What did she beg of the Moon after that?" was all he could say.
"She had concluded that the Man in the Moon was unable to give her a bog, even if he wanted to, so she decided to start out and find one. That was the beginning of the end of her troubles. She begged Mr. Moon to show her how to get there, when she came to the point of starting, and she only added, 'Give me a green dress, Mr. Moon, Mr. Moon!' And that's exactly what the Man in the Moon did for her. The frogs made their journey in a body, on the darkest night of the year. But there was just one Moonbeam and it was on duty for this one thing, to show the frogs how to go."
"Wonderful!" exclaimed Kingfisher. "Wonderful! But which night of the year was it?" Mr. Kingfisher thought of several things he might do, if he knew which night was the blackest.
"The darkest night of all, my dear friend, is the one when you change the color of your life."
This silenced Mr. Kingfisher; and Professor Crane, perceiving that the words had taken effect, concluded his story.
"That single Moonbeam Angel was very beautiful and powerful. For, just as the frogs came at last to the valleys and found a deep swamp where they could forever be happy, with water or land as they wanted, Moonbeam touched them farewell, and their dresses turned to russet and green."
There were no remarks to be made, for Professor Crane clapped his bill together exactly as though he brought the book of history together with a bang; and he ruffled his wings as if he were about to fly off.
So little Kingfisher, not knowing just how to thank the great bird, said something about going home to supper.
"Just so, just so," clacked Professor Crane.
And the two birds flew up and away, Kingfisher to his nest in the tree-top, and the learned Professor to his books and studies.