Monday at the southern waters was a return to the ordinary. The long-resident frog, whose absence Sunday’s bulletin recorded with what readers may have read as a trace of concern, had resumed his place under the second willow shortly after first honk. He was there throughout, and gave no sign of having been anywhere of consequence. The question being not one the frog welcomes, as past occasions have gently established, it went unasked.
This paper took its accustomed remove and noted, for the second day running, the small geography of the vacant circle. The pondweed at its edge had not much altered. The slight unevenness in the surface held, the way such things do when no one disturbs them. The three provisional candidate pads were as they were. None of them, this paper records yet again, has been constituted as central.
Around the second honk a small lily pad of no particular acquaintance drifted past from the upper southern shallows. It was not one of the three candidates, and not, by any record on hand, ever distinguished in these pages before. Modest in size. A leaf to be charitably called respectable green. It went on its way, after the manner of pads with no reason to stop. The frog watched it pass and made no remark.
Then a small leaf, off the willow above, came down with the slowness of a leaf that has judged its descent, and settled near his station. On this the frog did speak. His remark, set down with the imperfections of the hearing that took it down duly noted, was that the willow was, in his recollection, as forthcoming as it had ever been at this hour, and that this was, on the whole, to be welcomed. It was taken for a word on the canopy and not on any other thing, and no enquiry followed.
The morning went on in that register a good while. Minnows crossed the central position without remarking on it. A dragonfly, Sunday’s perhaps or perhaps another, inspected the easternmost pad again and left toward the willow.
This paper makes no claim that Monday was other than the day it was. The southern waters were at rest. The frog was at his station. The central position stayed as it has stayed, in no apparent haste to stop, open to whatever course the pond may, in time, see fit to take.