On a warm summer evening, under the gentle glow of the moon, a Frog named Fred decided to sit at the edge of a lily pond and sing sweet songs to himself. While a few frogs looked on, most of them were already tucked away in their beds. Fred was lovely to hear, but he was shy and did not sing loud enough to make himself known to the other animals who lived around.
The nightingale lived in the prickly ash-tree close by and sang marvelously. So, too, did the whippoorwill in the althea-bush. They were not quite neighbors, but still they listened and quickly recognized that the new voice they heard coming from the lily pond was different in tone from their own.
“Between you and me,” said the nightingale to the whippoorwill, “that Frog has a great fine voice, worth hearing. It is a thousand pities that he has not been trained. I will make him an offer.”
Next day Fred sat on a lily leaf and sighed a little, for Moonlight Nightingale’s words had got into his head, and he had tried, when he thought no one was listening, to sing loud enough to be heard away in the althea-bush. Still, who was there to teach him?
Fred had not long to wait. The nightingale perched on a branch directly above his head and told him that if he would like to come and live in the bush, he, the nightingale, would be glad to learn him to sing.
“And will you, dear nightingale, really stay with me till I can sing well enough to please myself?”
“Nothing easier,” came the answer. “I will stay here till the end of the moon, and if by then you have not mastered all I can teach you, I will stay all next month.”
So the nightingale, pleased with her little joke, stayed all the rest of the moon in the prickly ash-bush.
But what she taught Fred did not help him to sing. Fred was too thick-headed and could not learn. The end of the month came, the nightingale perched on a bough close to Fred, and said:
“Well, Frog, how are you coming on with your lessons? Let me hear you try.”
“Oh! I am doing quite well,” Fred answered. “Only yesterday I grasped the measure of the song of the kiss-me-at-the-garden-gate-will-you-nay-or-yes-and-here-are-nay-but-whispers-the-poor-maid-on-high!
“Now this nightingale could not scorn such a pretty song in so sweet a tune, for she herself was fond of it. “Listen,” said she, and she sang it over and over again in softest tones.
Then drawing herself up on the branch, she rattled off all the variations in her own manner.
“Golly,” said Fred, astonished. “That’s the way I want to sing, only grander yet!”
“Well, what have you to say to yourself,” asked the nightingale when she had finished, “or perhaps you can do better?”
“I bet you my warty head against a dandelion that I will sing before six days are over!” said Fred.
“So much, so much the worse,” said the nightingale to herself, “if I lose. It means my supper every night after moonlight.”
Then to Fred she said: “I am much obliged to you, dear Frog, and bid you good-morning.”
But all that day and all the next night Fred sat on a lily leaf and meditated. Like wise he was Frogs, two at most lived, laughed, and croaked away every sunshiny day without bothering their heads about would-be masters and their lessons. Against the eighth day the nightingale to her great glee had even forgotten the Frog altogether, but that day Fred came by the prickly ash reasonably quickly.
“And can you sing to please yourself by this time?” she called down to him.
“Can I? That’s what I can,” said Fred, puffing out his throat. “Listen, and be astonished! CrooooooOAAAAAcaNO:NO! ACO: NOh! Oh, Oh, OH-OH!”
The nightingale very nearly burst. Sylph-like she flitted down to the Frog, surged all around him with loud-plaintive cries, stretched well below her throat, snapped her beak at him, “CrooooooOAAAA”: “CA! NO! NO! NO! CAN YOU! YOU CAN:
NO, IF I DO PLEAD, NO, KING NEPTUNE HE DON’T ME NEED NO, NO; O-O-H!”
Then all by herself she sang “Sweet Echo” and a “Parting Song for a Wedding,” tarrying on purpose to sing loud enough to allow Fred the Frog a chance to join in the chorus. Then she flitted away, hid herself, and stayed there watching all she might see.
Next evening a good many acquaintances and neighbors came to that lily pond to listen to the singing of the Frog with the speckled skin down his back. The whippoorwill sat in the althea-bush and opened his beak, but no sound came out. The nightingale did likewise in the prickly Ash-tree and wiped a tear away now and again. Fred was too happy singing to notice anything.
He sang and sang away till the sun rose high in the heavens and the warm sunbeams brought on all sorts of vegetables and insects to reproduce, like himself, were the swimming fishes in the shining water.
Then after the long warm twilight came to its tired end, and the frogs all pressed Fred to sing again his sweet melancholy songs.
“Gentlemen frogs, what say you to a contest tonight:; just you and me!”
“Do you mean test of numbers,” said a young Frog, and by a clever trick I can double that number without taking the trouble myself to move.”