“In the afternoon, however, he had settled himself half-way up the side of his house.  His head was moving slowly from side to side, and a fine white thread was coming out of his mouth.  When I looked again he had fastened himself to the box by the tip of his tail and by a loop of fine silk passing round the upper part of his body.  There he hung motionless two, three, almost four, days.  The green and orange and black faded little by little, his body shrank to half its size, and he looked withered, unsightly, dead.  I thought he was dead; but Tim Rhodes (who all along had shown a friendly interest in my pursuit) took a look at my poor dead worm,’ and pronounced him all right.

“‘Keep a watch on him this afternoon,’ said Tim,’ and you’ll see something queer,’

“So we did; and Aunt Susan was summoned to the porch by the news that ‘the worm had split in the back and was coming out of his skin.’  By the time she had got on her glasses and was ready to witness this wonderful sight, it was over.  A heap of dried skin lay in the bottom of the box, and a pretty chrysalis of a delicate green color hung in place of the worm.

“‘O Auntie!’ said Charlie, ’you ought to have seen him twist and squirm and make the split in his back bigger and bigger till it burst open and tumbled off, just as a boy wriggles out of a tight coat, you know!’

“After this came three weeks of waiting, during which the green chrysalis turned gray and hard and the other worms, one by one, went through the same changes, until four gray chrysalis were fastened to the sides of the box.

“Every day I looked, but nothing happened, until it seemed to me, tired of waiting, that nothing ever would happen.  But one bright morning I forgot all my weariness when I found, clinging to the netting, a beautiful creature like the one we saw on the honeysuckle this afternoon, with a slender black body and wings spotted with yellow and scarlet and lovely blue.  When I opened the box he didn’t try to fly.  He was weak and trembling, and his wings were damp, but every moment they grew larger and his colors brighter in the sunshine.

“While Charlie and I stood watching him, we discussed, in our own way, a problem that has puzzled wiser heads than ours—­how three distinct individuals (the worm, the chrysalis, and the butterfly) could be one and the same creature, and how from a low-born worm that groveled and crawled could be born this bright ethereal being—­all light and beauty and color—­that seemed fitted only for the sky.

“Aunt Susan listened to our talk a while and then repeated a text of Scripture:—­

“’Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body?’”

“While we talked the butterfly grew stronger and more beautiful, until at last, spreading his wings to their widest extent, he darted high into the air and we lost him.  But from the day I took the green worm from the fennel-bush in Aunt Susan’s garden I date my introduction to a delightful study which I have followed all my life as I have found opportunity.  So you see it is no wonder I am fond of the swallow-tailed butterfly; and I have another reason, for once on a time I tamed one so that it sucked honey from my finger.”