Green's
manufacture, in one hand, and a pincushion stuck full of needles waiting
for tops, in the other.

"I told you so," said Mrs. Linceford to Leslie. "That's it, then?" she
asked of Dakie Thayne.

"What, ma'am?"

"Butterflies. I knew you'd some hobby or other,--I said so. I'm glad
it's no worse," she answered, in her pleasant, smiling way. Dakie Thayne
had a great liking for Mrs. Linceford, but he adored Leslie Goldthwaite.

"I'd like to show them to you, if you'd care," he said. "I've got some
splendid ones. One great Turnus, that I brought with me in the
chrysalis, that hatched out while I was at Jefferson. I rolled it up in
a paper for the journey, and fastened it in the crown of my hat. I've
had it ever since last fall. The asterias worms are spinning now,--the
early ones. They're out on the carrot-tops in shoals. I'm feeding up a
dozen of 'em in a box. They're very handsome,--bright green with black
and yellow spots,--and it's the queerest thing to see them stiffen out
and change."

"_Can_ you? Do they do it all at once?" asked Etty Thoresby, slipping
into the rocking-chair, as Mrs. Linceford, by whom she had come and
placed herself within the last minute, rose and went in to follow her
laundress, just then going up the stairs with her basket.

"Pretty much; it seems so. The first thing you know they stick
themselves up by their tails, and spin a noose to hang back their heads
in, and there they are, like a papoose in a basket. Then their skin
turns a queer, dead, ashy color, and grows somehow straight and tight,
and they only squirm a little in a feeble way now and then, and grow
stiffer and stiffer till they can't squirm at all, and then they're
mummies, and that's the end of it till the butterflies are born. It's a
strange thing to see a live creature go into its own shroud, and hang
itself up to turn into a corpse. Sometimes a live one, crawling round to
find a place for itself, will touch a mummy accidentally; and then, when
they're not quite gone, I've seen 'em give an odd little quiver, under
the shell, as if they were almost at peace, and didn't want to be
intruded on, or called back to earthly things, and the new comer takes
the hint, and respects privacy, and moves himself off to find quarters
somewhere else. Miss Leslie, how splendidly you're doing those! What's
the difference, I wonder, between girls' fingers and boys'? I couldn't
make those atoms of balls so round and perfect, 'if I died an