THE EARTHWORM AND THE STORK.

New Zealand Mail, 3 December 1896, Page 69

THE EARTHWORM AND THE STORK.

[From The Danish.]

Now the stork grew angry, and struck the ground hard several times with his big red bill.

The worm appeared, writhing with fear and terror.

“ Do you not come when I call ?” said the stork, looking daggers, and standing on one leg. “Do you not know who I am, and -who you are ? Do you not value my condescension in speaking to you ?” “ Do not get angry, your honour,” begged the worm. “ I was so frightened ; you said yourself I should be careful of meeting you if you were hungry.” “ I keep my word,” said the stork proudly. “ Now tell mo somothing of your way of living. I feel dull, and it is no harm for us gentlemen to learn how the meaner people spend their time.” “ What shall I tell you that can amuse you ? lam always toiling, from the time lam born till the time I am eaten. I plough the earth and dig ditches.” “ Hum,” interrupted the stork kindly. “ Do you dig the ditches—those with the frogs in ?”

“ Oh, no ! that is too heavy a task for me. It is down in the ground that I dig wee little burrows, running this way and that way.” “ What good does that do ? Any good for a stork ?”

“ Yes,” answered the worm. “ First there is my own person, which your honour can feast on when you like.” “ I know that; you should not remind me so often. But what further ?”

“ It i 3 I who prepare the ground for the grass, trees, and flowers. I make the mould.”

“ Is that the dirt we trample in ?” “Excuse me, your honour, that I make bold to contradict you, but you must not call it dirt. It is the fertile soil that nourishes all the plants. On the plants the insects live, upon which the frogs feed ; and those both your honour and your noble family condescend to partake of.” “Do you think I don’t know it all ? I only wanted to try your knowledge. Well, how do you make this—what did you call it?”

“ Mould,” said the worm. “ I carry the soil that lies deeper down up into the air, that the sun may warm it and the rain wet it. And the soil from the surface I carry down; thus I 'mix and change it, then it becomes mould.”

“Very sensible,” the stork remarked. “ What then ?”

The worm crept nearer, eager to tell; he was not used to meeting anybody who cared to listen.

“ Have you not noticed that sometimes the withered leaves are rolled up like sugar cups and stand with the point down in the ground? I have done that. Idoit in the night, when it is quiet and dark and there is nobody to hurt me. Next night I pull it further down, and thus continue till I get it all down, then I make a mould of it.” “That is very interesting,” said the stork. “ Thank you ever so much, your honour/ cried the worm, delighted. “ I can, I believe, be of some service to you.” “ I think you are getting a high opinion of yourself.”

“ Oh dear no ! I know too well what a mean creature lam compared with you. I -would but warn you of a danger threatening you.” “ Me !” exclaimed the stork. “ No danger threatens me. I am loved and protected all over the country.' Anybody hurting me must pay a fine. I fear you are getting a wee bit cracked, my dear worm.” “Look here, sir, you just listen to me for a minute. We dig our walks all over the place, and being so numerous we have dug this garden through and through. In this piaco only there are about fifty thousand of us.”

“ Oh, dear !” cried the stork, smacking his

lips. The worm hurried towards his hole. “ Where are you going-?” “ Well, your honour, I am afraid to he near when your honour speaks in such a hungry voice.” “ Make haste and tell further,” requested the stork impatiently. “ I would just let your honour know we have excavated the house, and it may fall any day.” “ Ha, ha, ha !” laughed the stork. “ Do not laugh at me, your honeur, for I am telling the real truth. Remember how old and rotten the vicarage is, how easily it may fall.” The stork continued to laugh, and wanted to strike the worm with his bill, but he had already gained his hole. The stork flew to his lady to tell her about the silly worm, who imagined he and his kin were able to destroy a stork's residence. “ You should not make yourself so intimate with such low people : they get absurd notions,” replied the lady. “Never mind; next time I meet him I must eat him.” A week slipped by. It was a fine summer day, and the storks were on the roof lovingly regarding their young brood lying in the n6st. “ They have now got their down,” said the mother. “ So they have. There is a lot to do yet, though,” answered her lord. “ The frogs

are getting more careful; we may still experience some difficulty before we have done. To-day I only caught one frog. If I meet the worm to-day ” “ What is that ?” interrupted the lady stork. “It seemed as if the roof was rocking.” “ What can it be ?” cried he ; and even before he had finished the sentence the house tumbled down with a great crash, the dust dancing and whirling high in the sunny air. Yet higher flew the storks, rending the air with their cries. The house was nothing but a heap of bricks, mortar and rotten beams. A melancholy pile huddled together in greatest confusion. And deep, deep down in this pile the nest and the young ones lay crashed and buried.

“ Oh, my children !” wailed the mother. For many hours both circled round the ruins, calling most pitifully on their children. They pecked at the bricks and listened, but there was no answer.

In the evening they rested on a tree in the garden talking about their unhappy fate.

“ The worm!” the stork suddenly exclaimed. He now remembered the warning, and -wished he had taken the hint.

“ How could I suppose the stupid worm to be right? But come, \ye will eat him. He and his brethren have caused the death of our children.”

Arriving in the walk, they called the worm with kind words.

“ Dear little worm,” he said in the mildest of voices, “ my wife is here, and would like to hear about your interesting life underground.” But the worm, feeling the shake of the fall, had crept downwards ever so far. He had neither heard the endearing words nor their angry knocks on the ground. At last they went away to visit their neighbours and tell them what ill-luck they had had. When night had spread her dusky veil

over garden and meadows, the worm issued forth from his hole, stretching himself comfortabty in the dewy grass. “ How beautifully heavy the air is !” he mused. “ I think we shall have some rain in the night. Oil ! how beautiful is life, especially since his honour has gone away. He was, indeed, a very gracious gentleman, yet I was constantly fearing he might get hungry some time or other.” —“ Little Folks,”