hey have got their wings, Mother!"

"But it does not end, cherie," was the quiet reply. "The moths leave
behind them their eggs, which hatch into another family of silkworms.
The work goes on, don't you see; it does not stop."

The girl's face brightened.

"It is so with children," continued her mother. "They live after their
parents are gone, and carry forward the family name and the good
principles their fathers and mothers have left in their keeping. You and
Pierre will, I hope, take out into the world all the good things your
father and I have attempted to teach you. Try to live always so that the
name you bear shall be honored. We have been poor French peasants but we
have never done anything that could cause you shame. And now in addition
to that knowledge you will have it ever to remember that your father was
a soldier of France, and when trouble came to our beloved land he gladly
offered his life to serve her."

A light of exaltation glowed in the woman's eyes.

Pierre, who had stolen unnoticed into the room, thought he had never
seen his mother so beautiful. There was something in her face that
brought to his mind the Jeanne d'Arc statue in the village square.

Softly he bent and kissed her cheek.

With the gesture Madame Bretton seemed to rouse herself, and her grave
mood instantly shifted into playfulness.

"Dear, dear!" she cried. "How serious we all are getting! It was your
moths, Pierre, that set me moralizing this way. Our work with them is
not yet done, either, for we must spread out the sheets of paper on
which they are to lay their eggs. Then we can move the pairs of moths
onto them."

She rose briskly.

"But how can we, Mother?" queried Marie. "When we touch them they will
surely fly away, won't they?"

"No, dear. After the moths have found their mates they can be moved very
easily. I have often seen your father take them gently by the wings and
put as many couples as he could on large sheets of white paper. There
they remained, and after their eggs were laid we removed the moths and
folding the papers of eggs put them away for next season's hatching. The
eggs were fastened so firmly to the paper that there was no danger of
losing any of them. Now where shall we spread the papers for our own
moths? They must be put well out of the sun and the strong light and
also where there is nothing to disturb the butterflies--no mice or
insects for example--or they will not lay eggs for us. Suppose w