y
in altitudinal size--two large tadpoles being close below Guinevere,
and a bevy of six tiny chaps lowest down. All were lightly poised,
swaying in mid-water, at a gently sloping angle, like some unheard-of,
orange-stained, aquatic autumn foliage.

For two weeks Guinevere remained almost as I have described her,
gaining slightly in size, but with little alteration of color or
pattern. Then came the time of the great change: we felt it to be
imminent before any outward signs indicated its approach. And for four
more days there was no hint except the sudden growth of the hind legs.
From tiny dangling appendages with minute toes and indefinite knees,
they enlarged and bent, and became miniature but perfect frog's limbs.

She had now reached a length of two inches, and her delicate colors
and waving fins made her daily more marvelous. The strange thing about
the hind limbs was that, although so large and perfect, they were
quite useless. They could not even be unflexed; and other mere
pollywogs near by were wriggling toes, calves, and thighs while yet
these were but imperfect buds. When she dived suddenly, the toes
occasionally moved a little; but as a whole, they merely sagged and
drifted like some extraneous things entangled in the body.

Smoothly and gracefully Guinevere moved about the aquarium. Her gills
lifted and closed rhythmically--twice as slowly as compared with the
three or four times every second of her breathless young tadpolehood.
Several times on the fourteenth day, she came quietly to the surface
for a gulp of air.

Looking at her from above, two little bulges were visible on either
side of the body--the ensheathed elbows pressing outward. Twice, when
she lurched forward in alarm, I saw these front limbs jerk
spasmodically; and when she was resting quietly, they rubbed and
pushed impatiently against their mittened tissue.

And now began a restless shifting, a slow, strange dance in mid-water,
wholly unlike any movement of her smaller companions; up and down,
slowly revolving on oblique planes, with rhythmical turns and
sinkings--this continued for an hour, when I was called for lunch. And
as if to punish me for this material digression and desertion, when I
returned, in half an hour, the miracle had happened.

Guinevere still danced in stately cadence, with the other Redfins at a
distance going about their several businesses. She danced alone--a
dance of change, of happenings of tremendous import, o