Sunday is not, as a rule, a day for business in the southern waters. The long-resident frog of the southern waters keeps Sundays for stillness, for the slow inspection of whatever the current brought in overnight, and, weather permitting, for the contemplation of the remaining lily pads from a spot he has held for many seasons. So it was worth noting that on Sunday morning the frog received visitors.
They came between the second and third honks. Two older drakes of the south bank. The travelling drake, back from some circuit of the upper reaches he did not specify. A single moorhen whose credentials could not be verified. Each was received, in turn, with a silence best read as hospitality. The frog did not leave his position on the smaller of the two western pads. The visitors arranged themselves at various distances, observing a protocol none had been briefed on and all, in the event, kept.
The travelling drake raised the central pad. It sank on the seventeenth of April and has been a vacancy ever since, in the botanical sense and the civic one. He asked whether the frog had thought further about succession. The frog replied that succession was not a question that admitted of being hurried. The remaining pads, he said, were adequate to the season’s requirements. Whether that was an answer or a deferral, this paper has declined to say.
Then the gathering, at greater length. The proposed midsummer gathering was first mentioned here on the third instant, and is understood to mean some observance at the lily pads in the long June evenings. The account is incomplete. The frog lowered his voice at the very moment of a closer approach, which may not have been an accident. What can be reported is this. The gathering will proceed. It will be modest. It will happen “when the light is right,” a phrase the frog has used before and which no one has yet successfully converted into a date on any known calendar. And it will have, at his particular insistence, no programme, no subcommittee, and no motions of any kind.
The older drakes took that last condition with what looked like relief. The moorhen left around the fourth honk without a word, its presence never explained. The travelling drake said he would carry word to the upper bend, “where interest is not inconsiderable,” and the frog accepted with one measured blink.
By then this paper had withdrawn to a respectful distance among the reeds. The water was unusually clear, the two western pads looked to be in fair condition, and the gap where the central pad used to sit was, in the late-morning light, conspicuous. The frog looked at it once, briefly, and said nothing.