FinalSync™ is a registered trademark in the United States
and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective
owners.
Tags Source: "There is nothing at all," said Father Snail. "No place can be better than
ours, and I have nothing to wish for!"
"Yes," said the dame. "I would willingly go to the manorhouse, be boiled, and
laid on a silver dish; all our forefathers have been treated so; there is
something extraordinary in it, you may be sure!"
"The manor-house has most likely fallen to ruin!" said Father Snail. "Or the
burdocks have grown up over it, so that they cannot come out. There need not,
however, be any haste about that; but you are always in such a tremendous
hurry, and the little one is beginning to be the same. Has he not been
creeping up that stalk these three days? It gives me a headache when I look up
to him!"
"You must not scold him," said Mother Snail. "He creeps so carefully; he will
afford us much pleasure--and we have nothing but him to live for! But have
you not thought of it? Where shall we get a wife for him? Do you not think
that there are some of our species at a great distance in the interior of the
burdock forest?"
"Black snails, I dare say, there are enough of," said the old one. "Black
snails without a house--but they are so common, and so conceited. But we might
give the ants a commission to look out for us; they run to and fro as if they
had something to do, and they certainly know of a wife for our little snail!"
"I know one, sure enough--the most charming one!" said one of the ants. "But I
am afraid we shall hardly succeed, for she is a queen!"
"That is nothing!" said the old folks. "Has she a house?"
"She has a palace!" said the ant. "The finest ant's palace, with seven hundred
passages!"
"I thank you!" said Mother Snail. "Our son shall not go into an ant-hill; if
you know nothing better than that, we shall give the commission to the white
gnats. They fly far and wide, in rain and sunshine; they know the whole forest
here, both within and without."
"We have a wife for him," said the gnats. "At a hundred human paces from here
there sits a little snail in her house, on a gooseberry bush; she is quite
lonely, and old enough to be married. It is only a hundred human paces!"
"Well, then, let her come to him!" said the old ones. "He has a whole forest
of burdocks, she has only a bush!"
