ish are being
taken and stolen?"

Now the wagtail thought this very strange behaviour, when he had taken
the trouble to let old Ogrebones know, and so he very wisely made up his
mind never to interfere with other people's business again; for, said
he, as he got out of the hole at last, "I don't know but what the heron
has as good a right to the fish as old surly has; at all events, I'll
never fetch him out any more."

Out bounced the kingfisher--"Here! hi! I say! you, there! what are you
after, impudence? Do you know that you are poaching?"

"Eh?" said the heron, looking at the showy little bird that was flitting
round him with his feathers sticking up, and looking as though he were
in a terrible passion; "Eh?" said the heron, "what's poaching?"

"What's poaching, ignoramus? why, taking other people's fish. Don't you
know who I am?" said the kingfisher, sitting upon a spray and looking
very self-satisfied and important.

"No," said the heron; "I don't know you. But you are not a bad-looking
little fellow; only you are small--very small. Why, where are your
legs?"

"Come, now," said Ogrebones, "none of your impudence, old longshanks.
I'm the king--the kingfisher; and I order you off; so go at once."

"Ho-ho-ho," laughed the tall bird. "And pray who made you a king? I'm
not going to be driven off by such a scrubby little thing as you, even
if you have got such grand feathers on your back. Why, if I were to
shut my bill upon your neck, that head of yours would drop off regularly
scissored, and then you'd be just such a king as Charles the First."

"Oh, dear!" said the kingfisher, "only hark at him! I never heard such
a character before in my life."

"He nearly killed one of my little ones," quacked the duck, coming up.

"Stuck his beak in my back," said a frog, putting his nose out of the
water; and then seeing that the heron was going to make a dart at him,
"Ouf," said he, popping down again in a hurry, and never stopping until
had crept close down to the bottom of the pond where he crept under the
weeds, and lay there all day, lost frightened to death.

"Keep your little flat bills at home, ma'am," said the heron. "But
really," he said politely, "I did not know they were yours, or I should
not have done so; but who would have thought that those little yellow
dabs were children of such a beautifully white and graceful creature as
you are?"

Whereupon the duck blushed, and spread one of her webbed f