98 A REAL POND.

“While you were having your dinner, Mousie, I went to
the blacksmith, and got him to bend this bit of wire for us, and
to fasten it to the end of this hazel stick, which I cut from the
hedge,” he said; ‘‘then mother found a bit of muslin, which she
sewed on. We don’t want anything else now but an empty
pickle-bottle, which we must beg from cook.”

Very soon they were by the side of the pond, and Mousie
was very anxious to fish with the net herself.

In one place there was a large trunk of a tree, which had
fallen right across the mud at the edge of the pond. It made a
firm footing, so that she could either walk or sit on it without
fear of sinking over her boots.

She dipped her net into the water, making a dash with it;
she dragged it through as quickly as she could, as far as her
arms could reach, and brought it to land again. Mousie
thought that the net would be quite full of fishes, or of
something ; but oh, dear! there was nothing inside it at all but
a little scrap of floating dead leaf which had fallen from a
tree.

She tried another sweep with the net, a harder one than
before, this time plunging it into the middle of a crowd of small
moving black things. But no sooner did they find the net
coming in among them with a great flop, than they all disap-
peared like magic, darting away right and left as swiftly as so
many little dancing shadows ; and once more poor Mousie drew
in her net quite empty.

“IT never shall catch anything!” she said, sorrowfully, “if
they would only come a little nearer, and keep still for one
minute! I can’t see so much as one of those little things
walking about at the bottom now—there is not one left!”

This was true. Mousie had frightened them all away with
her splashing and plunging. Every living creature in the pond