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.

AMONG THE MERROWS.

A SKETCH OF A GREAT AQUARIUM.

I remember the time when I, and a brother who was with me, devoutly believed in a being whom we supposed to live among certain black, water-rotted, weed-grown stakes by the sea.  These old wooden ruins were, I fancy, the remains of some rude pier, and amid them, when the tide was low, we used to play, and to pay fancy visits to our fancy friend.