“How funny!  Say, what is he going to turn into?”

But Miss Ruth was busy house-cleaning.  First she turned out her tenants.  They were at breakfast; but they took their food with them, and did not mind.  Then she tipped their house upside down, and brushed out every stick and stem and bit of leaf, spread thick brown paper on the floor, and put back Greeny and Blacky snug and comfortable.

The next time Sammy and Roy met at the parsonage, three flower-pots of moist sand stood in a row under the bench.

“Winter quarters,” Miss Ruth explained when she saw the boys looking at them; “and it’s about time for my tenants to move in.  Greeny and Blacky have stopped eating, and Sly-boots is turning pale.”

“A worm turn pale!”

“Yes, indeed; look at him.”

It was quite true; the green on his back had changed to gray-white, and his pretty spots were fading.

“He looks awfully; is he going to die?”

“Yes—­and no.  Come this afternoon and see what will happen.”

But when they came, Blacky and Sly-boots were not to be seen.  Their summer residence, empty and uncovered, stood out in the sun, and two of the flower-pots were covered with netting.

“I couldn’t keep them, boys,” Miss Ruth said; “they were in such haste to be gone.  Only Greeny is above ground.”

Greeny was in his flower-pot.  He was creeping slowly round and round, now and then stretching his long neck over the edge, but not trying to get out.  Soon he began to burrow.  Straight down, head first, he went into the ground.  Now he was half under, now three quarters, now only the end of his tail and the tip of his horn could be seen.  When he was quite gone, Sammy drew a long breath and Roy said, “I swanny!”

“How long will he have to stay down there?”

“All winter, Roy.”

“Poor fellow!”

“Happy fellow! I say.  Why, he has done being a worm.  His creeping days are over.  He has only to lie snug and quiet under the ground a while; then wake and come up to the sunshine some bright morning with a new body and a pair of lovely wings to spread and fly away with.”

“Why, it’s like—­it’s like”—­

“What is it like, Sammy?”

“Ain’t it like folks, Miss Ruth?” Grandma sings:—­

    ’I’ll take my wings and fly away
        In the morning,’

“Yes,” she said; “it is like folks.”  Then glancing at her crutch, repeated, smiling:  “In the morning.”

When the woodbine in the porch had turned red, and the maples in the door-yard yellow, the flower-pots were removed to the warm cellar, and one winter evening Sammy Ray wrote Greeny’s epitaph:—­

    “A poor green worm, here I lie;
    But by-and-by
    I shall fly,
    Ever so high,
    Into the sky.”

He came often in the spring to ask if any thing had happened, and one day Miss Ruth took from a box and laid in his hand a shining brown chrysalis, with a curved handle.