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“How they dart and swim round and round!” he exclaimed.

“Splendid,” said Molly. “I am so sorry I am going away just now. You will try and keep the water fresh, won’t you?”

“Of course I will. And let me have the scarlet spider whilst you are away. I couldn’t find another.”

“Well, if you must; but do take care, Francis. And here are the two bits of gutta-percha tubing to make into syphons. You must put them into hot water for a minute before you bend them, you know.”

“I’ll do it to-morrow, Molly; I have nothing else to do, you know, because Edward Brown won’t be back for three or four days. So we can do nothing about the cricket club.”

It was on the third day, when both the pieces of gutta-percha tubing were in a wash-hand basin of hot water, and the dragon-fly larva and I were finishing a minnow, with the help of the water-scorpion, that Master Edward Brown arrived unexpectedly, and so pressed his friend Francis to come out and consult “just for two minutes,” and so delayed him when he got him, that the tubing melted into a shapeless lump, and the carp died unnoticed by any one but myself.

On the fourth day the glass pond was moved into the conservatory, “to be out of the way.” The fish were excellent eating, and though the snails were at their wits’ end as the refuse rotted, and the water became more stagnant, and the weeds grew, till all the shell-fish in the pond could not have kept the place clean,–I did not mind it myself. As the water got low, I found a nice bit of rockwork above water, where I could sit by day, and at night the lights from the drawing-room gave an indescribable stimulus to my wings, and I sailed in, and flew round and round till I was tired, and (forgetting that no pond, not even a bed of mud, was below me!) drew in my wings, and dropped sharply down on to the floor. To do the family justice, they learned to know the sound of my fall, and even the old Doctor himself would go down on hands and knees to hunt for me under the sofa, for fear I should be trodden on.

On the fifth day I swallowed the scarlet spider. I hated myself for doing it, when I thought of Molly; but the spider was very foolish to meet me. He should have kept behind. And if I hadn’t eaten him, the dragon-fly larva would. What he had eaten, I do not think he could have told himself. There was very little left now for any one; even the water-scorpion had disappeared.

On the sixth day the glass pond had only two tenants worth speaking of–the dragon-fly larva and myself. We had both over-eaten ourselves, and for some hours we moved slowly about through the thickening puddle, nodding civilly when we passed each other among the feathery sprays of the Water Crowfoot. Then I began to get hungry. I knew it by feeling an impulse to look out for the dragon-fly larva, and I knew he knew it because he began to avoid me.

On the seventh day Molly ran into the conservatory, followed by her brother, and uttered a cry of dismay.

“Oh, what a state it’s in! Where are the syphons?”

“Why, they melted the day Edward Brown came back. We’ve been having such a lot of cricket, Molly!”

“There isn’t a fish left, and it smells horribly.”

“I’m very sorry, Molly. Let’s throw it out. I don’t want Grandfather to see it. Let me come.”

“No, no, Francis! There may be some left. Yes, there’s the beetle. I shall put it all in a pail and take it back to the pond. Oh dear! oh dear! I can’t see anything of the scarlet spider. My beautiful scarlet spider! I was so fond of him. Oh, I am so sorry! And no one has watered the Soldier, and he’s dead too.”

“Don’t cry, Molly! Please don’t cry! I dare say the spider is there, only it’s so small.”

For some time Molly poked carefully here and there, but the spider was not to be found, and the contents of the aquarium were carried back to the wood.

I was very glad to see the pond again. The water-gnats were taking dimensions as usual, a blue-black beetle sat humming on the stake, and dragon-flies flitted hungrily about, like splinters of a broken rainbow; but the Water-Soldier’s place was empty, and it was never refilled. He was the only specimen.

Molly was probably in the right when, after a last vain search for the scarlet spider, as Francis slowly emptied the pail, she said with a sigh,

“What makes me so very sorry is, that I don’t think we ought to have ‘collected’ things unless we had really attended to them, and knew how to keep them alive.”

FOOTNOTES:

Footnote D: Water-soldier–Stratiotes aloides. A handsome and rare plant, of aloe-like appearance, with a white blossom rising in the centre of its sword-leaves.