I. 'I almost touched it!'

"'Here, let me smash him!' said Charlie; 'where is he?'

"'Oh, don't touch him!' I cried; 'he might bite you. Oh, dear, I hate worms! I wonder what they were made for!'

"'That kind was made to turn into butterflies,' said Tim Rhodes.

"Tim was working Aunt Susan's garden on shares that summer, and had heard all we said, for he was weeding the onion-bed close by.

"'What, that fellow!' said Charlie; 'will he turn into a butterfly?' and we both of us looked at the caterpillar. He was about as long and as thick as my little finger, of a bright leafy green, with black-velvet rings dotted with orange at even distances along his body. He lay at full length on a fennel-stalk, and seemed to be asleep; but when Charlie touched him with a little stick, instantly there shot out of his head a pair of orange-colored horns, and the air was full of the pungent odor of fennel.

"'It smells like prayer-meeting,' said Charlie, and ran off to play; but I wanted further information.

"'Mr. Rhodes,' said I, 'how do you know this kind of worm makes butterflies?'

"'Because I've seen 'em do it, child. If you should put that fellow now in a box with some holes in the top, so as he could breathe, and give him plenty of fresh fennel to eat, in a week (or less time if he's full grown) he'll wind himself up, and after a spell he'll hatch out a butterfly—a pretty one, too, I tell you,'

"'I mean to try it,' I said; and I ran to the house and Aunt Susan gave me an old ribbon-box, and Mr. Rhodes punched a few holes in the cover with his pocket-knife; and after a little hesitation I picked the fennel-stalk with the worm on it, and laid it carefully in the box, making sure that the cover was tight. The box was then taken to the house and deposited on a bench in the porch, for Aunt Susan objected to entertaining this new boarder indoors.

"I gave my worm his breakfast the next morning before I had my own, and, forgetting my aversion, sat by the open box and watched him eat, as his strong jaws made clean work with leaf and stem.

"'He isn't so ugly, after all, Charlie,' I said; 'he is almost handsome for a worm, with all those bright colors on him,'

"Then Charlie caught a little of my enthusiasm, and said he meant to keep a worm too. So he searched the fennel-bush and found three, and tumbled them unceremoniously into the box.

"'Now they'll have good times together,' said he; 'that fellow was awful lonesome shut up by himself,'

"At Aunt Susan's suggestion I improved my worm-house by removing the top of the box and stretching mosquito-netting across, fastening it securely along the edges lest my prisoners should escape. And it was well I took this precaution; for, though for several days they made no attempt to get away, and seemed to do nothing but eat and sleep, one morning I found my largest and handsomest worm in a very disturbed and restless condition. He was making frantic efforts to escape. Up and down, round and round, over and under his companions, who were still quietly feeding, without a moment's pause, he was pushing his way. I watched him till I was tired; but when I left him he was still on his travels.

"In the afternoon, however, he had settled himself half-way up the side of his house. His head was moving slowly from side to side, and a fine white thread was coming out of his mouth. When I looked again he had fastened himself to the box by the tip of his tail and by a loop of fine silk passing round the upper part of his body. There he hung motionless two, three, almost four, days. The green and orange and black faded little by little, his body shrank to half its size, and he looked withered, unsightly, dead. I thought he was dead; but Tim Rhodes (who all along had shown a friendly interest in my pursuit) took a look at my poor dead worm,' and pronounced him all right.

"'Keep a watch on him this afternoon,' said Tim,' and you'll see something queer,'

"So we did; and Aunt Susan was summoned to the porch by the news that 'the worm had split in the back and was coming out of his skin.' By the time she had got on her glasses and was ready to witness this wonderful sight, it was over. A heap of dried skin lay in the bottom of the box, and a pretty chrysalis of a delicate green color hung in place of the worm.

"'O Auntie!' said Charlie, 'you ought to have seen him twist and squirm and make the split in his back bigger and bigger till it burst open and tumbled off, just as a boy wriggles out of a tight coat, you know!'

"After this came three weeks of waiting, during which the green chrysalis turned gray and hard and the other worms, one by one, went through the same changes, until four gray chrysalis were fastened to the sides of the box.

"Every day I looked, but nothing happened, until it seemed to me, tired of waiting, that nothing ever would happen. But one bright morning I forgot all my weariness when I found, clinging to the netting, a beautiful creature like the one we saw on the honeysuckle this afternoon, with a slender black body and wings spotted with yellow and scarlet and lovely blue. When I opened the box he didn't try to fly. He was weak and trembling, and his wings were damp, but every moment they grew larger and his colors brighter in the sunshine.

"While Charlie and I stood watching him, we discussed, in our own way, a problem that has puzzled wiser heads than ours—how three distinct individuals (the worm, the chrysalis, and the butterfly) could be one and the same creature, and how from a low-born worm that groveled and crawled could be born this bright ethereal being—all light and beauty and color—that seemed fitted only for the sky.

"Aunt Susan listened to our talk a while and then repeated a text of Scripture:—

"'Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body?'"

"While we talked the butterfly grew stronger and more beautiful, until at last, spreading his wings to their widest extent, he darted high into the air and we lost him. But from the day I took the green worm from the fennel-bush in Aunt Susan's garden I date my introduction to a delightful study which I have followed all my life as I have found opportunity. So you see it is no wonder I am fond of the swallow-tailed butterfly; and I have another reason, for once on a time I tamed one so that it sucked honey from my finger."

"Auntie, you are joking!"

"Indeed, no. It was a poor little waif which, mistaking chimney heat for warm spring weather, hatched himself out of season, and whose life I prolonged by providing him with food."

"The dear little thing! Tell us about it, please."

"Well, I had put away some chrysalids for the winter in a closet in my sleeping-room, and one day my nurse—I was ill at the time—heard a rustling in the box where they lay and brought it to me for investigation; and, behold! when I opened it there was a full-grown swallow-tail, who, waking too soon from his winter's nap, left the soft bed of cotton where his companions lay sleeping side by side and, wide awake and ready to fly, was impatiently waiting for some one to let him out into the sunshine.

"But the March sunshine was fitful and pale, and the cold wind would have chilled him to death before night; so we resolved to keep him indoors. We gave him the liberty of the room, and he fluttered about the plants in the window, now and then taking a flight to the ceiling, where, I am sorry to say, he bruised his delicate wings; but he seemed to learn wisdom by experience, for after a while he contented himself with a lower flight. Every day my bed was wheeled close to the window, and I amused myself for hours watching my pretty visitor. He would greedily suck a drop of honey, diluted with water, from the leaf of a plant or from the end of my finger, and by sight