"Well?"

"It sounds almost absurd--but--I wanted to tell you--we ought to _pray_," he stammers, "it is the best thing against sorcery!"

"To pray? Perhaps so!!" Whereupon the two pike discover that it is years since they prayed last.

They cannot remember a word.

"Ashre,"[116] begins one.

"Ashre," repeats the other, and comes to a standstill.

"Oh, I want to pray!" moans the first.

"So do I!" chimes in the second, "for when all is said and done, we are but fish!"

A door opens in the wall, a little way, and two heads are seen in the aperture--a tipsy-looking man's head, and a woman's with curl papers.

"Ah," exclaims the man's head, joyously, "this is something like!

Pike--carp--and all the other good things."

"I should hope so! And I have sent for meat besides."

"My knowing little wife," chuckles the man's head.

"There, there, that will do."

And the heads disappear.

"Did you hear?" says a pike, "there are carp, too."

"They have the best of it."

"How is that?"

"To begin with, they have made no contracts, they are free agents.

Secondly, they can leap."

"If they would only give a _good_ leap, they would find themselves back in the river."

"Quite true."

"And something good might come of it for us. Wait a bit--let's try!

Carp!"

The carp have suddenly swum to the surface of the water, and are poking their noses over the edge of the bowl.

The pike, face to face with the carp:

"Bad luck, brothers?" he exclaimed.

"Bad," answer the carp.

"Bitter?"

"Bitter!"

"Very little water?"

"Oh, very little!"

"And it smells?"

"Ugh!"

"Not fit to live in?"

"Not fit!"

"We must get home, back to the river!"

"We--must!"

"We have forgotten what it was like in the river."

"Forgotten!"

"A sin!"

"A mortal sin!"

"Let us beat our head against the wall and do penance."

The carp flatten their bellies against the bowl. The pike run their head against the gla.s.s till it rings again.

"One should leap away home!" continues the pike.

"One should leap!"

"Well--leap!"

The pike commands, and the carp are out of the bowl and on the floor--lying there more dead than alive.

"I never knew," says the second pike, "that you were such an orator--your lips drop honey!"

The carp meanwhile are moaning.

"Hurry up!" orders the pike.