Wendy the Water Sprite had never seen any one or any thing so beautiful at daylight as her Crystal Waterfall looked in the dawn. All the blackness of the night was gone, and not even a shadow left to mark where it had been. The sun’s rays fell on the fall with such shining brightness that they lighted up the stones at the bottom of the mere and made them sparkle like stars. It made a soft greenish light in some places, and at others a deep sapphire blue. The flowers in the bushes round about were covered with dew which sparkled as if each drop were a gem set in the petals. There was not a breath of wind to ruffle their beauty, and the lily-pads on the top of the water reflected everything like a mirror, while the white lilies were sleeping peacefully on the surface.
It was early, and very few people were about. It was too late for nightingales and too early for larks. Even the doves were gazing about in surprise to find it light. The shy little animals of the woods and the chattering creatures of the fields had not begun to do their day's work, but everything seemed as though saying, "How lovely is the world!"
"Oh, yes," cried out Wendy, "it is lovely just where I am now; but oh dear, oh dear! I quite forgot to look at the sun yesterday. I do hope that the changes I am going to make are not prevented by its laziness in rising."
But she stopped and listened. It was all right!
"All right! all right!" gurgled all the brook at her feet, and away it went till lost in her Waterfall. Nothing could have been nicer than the way in which the Stone threw out the morning rays, and how the other White Stone kept his manner of holding them till a certain hour. It would have been quite impossible to imagine anything prettier!
"Now, I can and will find out my friends' wishes today," said Wendy. But at this moment a tiny ant laid hold of her little finger and cried out to her, "My dear, dear lady, pray cut off a large tip of your finger, as you would so readily do for dear sister Water, for she is ill and cannot help herself. We shall be extremely obliged to you if you do so, and you will benefit her more than you could possibly believe."
"Certainly," answered Wendy.
"But what are you going to do with it?"
"Oh, that does not concern you," replied the little ant.
"Certainly not," said Harper Toad, who chanced to appear on the scene.
"Of course it does not; but I am sure curiosity is a very bad trait, and I wonder you are not ashamed of it, Miss Spider, that you are full of it," said the ant.
"Do make haste, Miss Frog," said another little ant to a very, very small frog. "You must go out and plunder all the large dead insects of their eyes. It is very kind, I assure you, but it is really too bad not to repay Miss Sprite's civility in the way we first proposed."
"That doesn't concern the lady," croaked Harper Toad. He liked saying "that doesn't concern the lady."
"Let me know what it is in good time," said Ant Will.
"Pray, do you think such doubts amuse her?" asked the Frog. "Now I'm going out and plunder all the large dead insects of their eyes, as you said; but it is not at all particular like at present."
"That is a custom we have," said all the ants, "share it with us, dear Frog."
"And by the by, Miss Sprite," said the first little ant who had spoken, "you will find it a little custom of ours everywhere you go, to return thanks before every meal. It is only right, for these creatures cannot of course spread their good fortune as we do; besides, it is a great comfort to themselves to hear your thanks. You will find it very effective humbly to do as I do, and say over and over again: 'What a good, kind man our great little man is!'"
"But, dear aunt, who is the great little man?" was to have been asked here.
"Be silent, Miss Sprite," said an ant who was a little herdboy—so he was capable of scolding anybody before whom he himself had to obey. "You don't begin as you ought," he said, shaking his hairy head from side to side, a most ugly custom.
"All of you prating creatures," cried little Midge, "shall go without either eyes or sound limbs if you keep my passengers starving, and much more if my boatstick is ill tended," and tooted on his flute most mournfully.
"Be still, be still, sir," said the wharf-piler by the town over which he kept guard; "who are you, dare I ask, whom it is not enough to kill the creature and devour him as is the usual custom?"
"You will, of course, confess that it is quite as usual to put a vegetable side-dish to animal food," was requested to be mentioned here.
"Of course it is, you old rascal by the town! You are the only black pudding man de trop by the water," said all Midge's acquaintances at once.
"Well have I performed the duty my Bank entrusted to me," said Midge most loftily.
Nature was silent for a moment, and then said, "For all disorderly conduct, half-a-dozen pairs of fine geese will be seized," and punished little short of death by starvation.
"For just five minutes let us keep the rain off poor silly man yonder," was learnt from a good-natured little squirrel. "No great thing, for if a wind soon announces the approach of a thaw; I can myself supply such small losses as the poor man will possibly feel," said the captain of the bearers about the town; and under the dreadful heat the heavy rain kept on falling.
An ant who had never been well ignored a slight cold, imagining it to be a mere nothing; but soon it became a spirit dirt disagreeable with fever, and drew him into quite a short thing but sad little epitaph, like those he was going to write for his relations to be sure of: "He went before;" to read which about his grave the young folks always came.
"Now was the time for our friend in common to appear," said the little person to the right, but he privately took it all wrong himself. "A dainty morsel for your friend in common I have brought you from my kitchen, my revered ancestress—a great treat, the purest froth of dew, such as one could wish to please the most fastidious tastes," and struck up a favourite combat song.
"Keep at a distance with your dainty morsel, pray," sighed a bedraggled sparrow to poor Ant Will. "Still wet, from your ideas of what is considered keeping at a respectful distance, allow me to wish you happy four times. My friend on the point of leaving us hatched this very morning; not standing warm water better than other creatures is the cause of the chick's unfortunate situation."
"No, Cry Croaker, my name is to you only, and am not that," said Beat, "I love to croak maybe, but your flippancy is intolerable."
"What will not being that avail?"
"I will tell you; you only take the trouble of writing it all out on spreads of rotten wood."
"Should we not grieve for doubtless about half the inside of the Dumain dead beaten earth would come out unattended to," peaceably rejoined Cry Croaker.