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“Well, do as you like; only let us have plenty of water-boatmen,” said Molly.

“I’ve got half-a-dozen at least; and the last sweep I went very low, quite in the mud, and I’ve got some most horrid things. There’s one of them like a flat-iron, with pincers at the point.”

“That’s a water-scorpion. Oh, Francis! he eats dreadfully.”

“I don’t believe he can, he’s so flat. Molly, is that nasty-looking thing a dragon-fly larva?”

“I believe it is; for there is the mask. You know his face is so ugly nothing would come near him if he didn’t wear a mask. Then he lifts it up and snaps suddenly; he really does eat everything!”

“Well, I can’t help it. I must have him. I want to see him hatch; and I shall plant a bullrush for him to climb up.”

“I found a caddis-worm, with a beautifully built house, in the roots of the Water-Soldier, and I’m going to look along the edge for some shells. We must have shell-fish, you know, to keep the aquarium clean. Oh!”

“What is it, Molly? What have you found?”

“Oh, such a lovely spider! A water-spider–a scarlet spider. He’s very small, but such a colour! Francis dear, may I keep him all to myself? I don’t think I can let him go in with the others. If the dragon-fly larva ate him, I should never forgive myself, and you know you don’t know for certain that the beetle is Hydroeus piceus. I shall give him an aquarium of his very own in a green finger-glass, with nothing but a little very nice duckweed, and one small snail to keep it clean, like a general servant. May I, Francis?”

“By all means. I don’t want your scarlet spider. I can get lots more.” He went on dipping with the colander, and she began to dig up water-plants and lay them in a heap. I sat and watched them, but the Ranatra got nervous and tried to go below. As usual, the dry bristles in his tail would not pierce the water without a struggle, and after floundering in the most ludicrous fashion for a few minutes, he fell straight into the colander, and was put into one of the pickle-jars.

“I’ve got enough now,” said the boy, “and I want to go home and see about my net. I must have some fish. Can you carry the plants, Molly?”

“I’ll manage,” said Molly. “Now I’m ready.”

“Wait a minute, though–I’d forgotten the beetle.”

When I heard this I dropped into the water; but somehow or other I turned over very clumsily, and, like the Ranatra, I fell through into the colander, and was transferred to a pickle-jar.

Anything more disagreeable than being shaken up in a glass bottle, with beetles, and boatmen, and larvae of all sorts and sizes, including a dragon-fly in the second stage of his career, I can hardly imagine. When they took us out and put us into the glass pond, matters were certainly better, though there is a vast difference between a glass pond and a pond in a wood.

The first day it was by no means a bad imitation of a real pond, except for the want of a bed of mud. Molly had covered the bottom of the glass with gravel which she had steadily washed till water would run clear from it, in spite of the impatient exclamations of Francis, that it “would do now,” and quite regardless of the inconvenience to which I was subjected by being kept in the pickle-jar. In this gravel she had embedded the roots of some Water Crowfoot and other pond-plants. The stones in the middle were nicely arranged, and well covered with moss and water-weeds. When water had been poured in up to the brim of the bell-glass, and we had been emptied out of the jars, the dragon-fly larva got into a good hole among the stones and ate most of the May-fly grubs, water-shrimps, and so forth, as they came into sight. I did not do badly myself, and only the bigger and stronger members of our society and a few skins were there next day, when Francis brought a jar full of minnows, a small carp, and a bull’s-head, and turned them out in our midst.