ngs we have noted
was just on the eve of that change which should transport it to the
world of air. After eating the minnow it somehow failed to recover its
appetite, and remained, all the rest of the day and through the night,
clinging to one of the weed stems. Next morning, when the sun was warm
on the pool, it crawled slowly up, up, up, till it came out into a new
element, and the untried air fanned it dry. Its great round eyes,
formerly dull and opaque, had now grown transparent, and were gleaming
like live jewels, an indescribable blend of emerald, sapphire, and
amethyst. Presently its armour, now for the first time drying in the
sun, split apart down the back, and a slender form, adorned with two
pairs of crumpled, wet wings, struggled three-quarters of its length
from the shell. For a short time it clung motionless, gathering
strength. Then, bracing its legs firmly on the edges of the shell, it
lifted its tail quite clear, and crawled up the weed a perfect
dragon-fly, forgetful of that grim husk it was leaving behind. A few
minutes later, the good sun having dried its wings, it went darting
and hurtling over the pool, a gemlike, opalescent shining thing,
reflected gloriously in the polished mirror beneath.

The Little Wolf of the Air

The pool lay shimmering and basking in the flood of the June sun. On
three sides, east, west, and north, the willows and birches gathered
close about it, their light leafage hanging motionless in the clear,
still heat. On the south side it lay open toward the thick-grassed
meadows, where bees and flies of innumerable species flickered lazily
over the pale crimson clover-blooms. From the clover-blooms and the
vetch-blooms, the wheel-rayed daisies, and the tall umbels of the wild
parsnip, strange perfumes kept distilling in the heat and pulsing in
across the pool on breaths of air too soft to ruffle its surface.

Above this unruffled surface the air was full of dancing life. Gnats
hung in little, whirling nebulae; mosquitoes, wasplike flies, and
whirring, shard-winged beetles, passed and repassed each other in
intricate lines of flight; and, here and there, lucently flashing on
long, transparent, veined wings, darted the dragon-flies in their
gemlike mail. Their movements were so swift, powerful, and light that
it was difficult, in spite of their size and radiant colour, to detect
the business that kept the dragon-flies so incessantly and tirelessly
in action. Sometimes two