time of it, because I
have plenty to do; but you are a strange Joblily if you do not know that
I have anything but an easy time of it. Chasing minnows, jumping three
feet out of water after a butterfly, catching wigglers and mosquitoes,
and keeping a sharp lookout for unlucky grasshoppers that may chance to
fall in my way; all these are not easy. I tell you, there is no family of
our social position that has more trouble to earn a living than the bass
family."

"Come along," said the Joblily, giving another punch with his fish-bone;
and Larkin travelled on.

Presently they came to a log with something growing on it.

"What beautiful moss!"

"Moss, indeed!" said one of the Joblilies; "that is a colony of small
animals, all fast to one stem."

"They have an easy time of it, I suppose," said Lazy Larkin; "they don't
have to travel, for they cannot move."

"True, but these beautiful, transparent moss animals have to get their
living by catching creatures so small that you cannot see them. They have
great numbers of little fingers or feelers that are going all the time."

Larkin touched one, and it immediately drew itself in,--really _swallowed
itself_; for these little things take this way of saving themselves from
harm.

And so Larkin swam on, and found that it was a busy world beneath the
lake. He saw mussels slowly crawling through the sand; he found that the
pickerel, which he had supposed idle, was really standing guard over her
nest, and fanning the water with her fins all day long, that a current of
fresh water might be supplied to her eggs. And all the time the Joblilies
kept singing--

"Work! work!
Never shirk!
There is work for you,
Work for all to do!
Happy they who do it,
They that shirk shall rue it!"

And after their long swim around the lake, the Joblilies came back to
Duck Point again, and climbed out on the lily leaves. No sooner had
Larkin seated himself with the rest than he heard a great owl cry,
"Tu-whit! tu-whoo!"

Immediately the Joblilies leaped into the air, and the whole hundred of
them dashed into the water like so many bull-frogs, crying, as they came
down,

"What will the Joblily do,
When the great owl cries tu-whoo?"

Larkin looked around suddenly to see whither they had gone, but could
discover no trace of them. A moment after, he found himself sitting under
the same tree that he was under when the Joblilies came for him. The boys
had