GREENY, BLACKY, AND SLY-BOOTS.
Sammy Ray was running by the parsonage one day when Miss Ruth called to
him. She was sitting in the vine-shaded porch, and there was a crutch
leaning against her chair.
"Sammy," she said, "isn't there a field of tobacco near where you live?"
"Yes'm; two of 'em."
"To-morrow morning look among the tobacco plants and find me a large
green worm. Have you ever seen a tobacco worm?"
Sammy grinned.
"I've killed more'n a hundred of 'em this summer," he said. "Pat Heeley
hires me to smash all I can find, 'cause they eat the tobacco."
"Well, bring one carefully to me on the leaf where he is feeding; the
largest one you can find."
Before breakfast the next morning Ruth Elliot had her first sight of a
tobacco worm.
"Take care!" said Sammy, "or he'll spit tobacco juice on you. See that
horn on his tail? When you want to kill him, you jest catch hold this
way, and"--
"But I don't want to kill him," she said. "I want to keep him in this
nice little house I have got ready for him, and give him all the tobacco
he can eat. Will you bring me a fresh leaf every, morning?"
While she was speaking she had put the worm in a box with a cover of
pink netting. On his way home Sammy met Roy Tyler, and told him (as a
secret) that the lame lady at the minister's house kept worms, and would
pay two cents a head for tobacco worms. "Anyway," said Sammy, "that's
what she paid me."
If there was money to be got in the tobacco-worm business, Roy wanted a
share in it; and before night he brought to Miss Ruth, in an old tin
basin, eight worms of various sizes, from a tiny baby worm just hatched,
to a great, ugly creature, jet black, and spotted and barred with
yellow. The black worm Miss Ruth consented to keep, and Roy, lifting him
by his horn, dropped him on the green worm's back.
"Now you have a Blacky and a Greeny," the boy said; and by these names
they were called.
Roy and Sammy came together the next morning, and watched the worms at
their breakfast.
"How they eat!" said Sammy; "they make their great jaws go like a couple
of old tobacco-chewers."
"Yes; and if they lived on bread and butter 't would cost a lot to feed
'em, wouldn't it?" said Roy.
"Look at my woodbine worm, boys," Miss Ruth said, as she lifted the
cover of another box. "Isn't he a beauty? See the delicate green, shaded
to white, on his back, and that row of spots down his sides looking like
buttons! I call him Sly-boots, because he has a trick of hiding under
the leaves. He used to have a horn on his tail like the tobacco worms."
"Where that spot is, that looks like an eye?"
"Yes; and one day he ate nothing and hid himself away, and looked so
strangely that I thought he was going to die; but the next morning he
appeared in this beautiful new coat."
"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.
"What a funny little brown jug!" said Sammy.
"Greeny is inside; close your hand gently and see if you feel him."
"How cold!" said the boy; and then: "Oh! oh! he _is_ alive, for he
kicks!"
In June Greeny and Blacky came out of their shells, but no one saw them
do it, for it was in the night; but Sly-boots was more obliging. One
morning Miss Ruth heard a rustling, and lo! what looked like a great
bug, with long, slender legs, was climbing to the top of the box. Soon
he hung by his feet to the netting, rested motionless a while, and then
slowly, slowly unfolded his wings to the sun. They were brown and white
and pink, beautifully shaded, and his body was covered with rings of
brown satin. Blacky and Greeny were not so handsome. They had
orange-spotted bodies, great wings of sober gray, and carried long
flexible tubes curled like a watch-spring, that could be stretched out
to suck honey from the flowers.
At sunset Miss Ruth sent for the boys. She placed the uncovered box
where the moths waited with folded wings, in the open window. Up from
the garden came a soft breeze sweet with the breath of the roses and
petunias. There was a stir, a rustle, a waving of dusky wings, and the
box was empty.
So Greeny and Blacky and Sly-boots "took their wings and flew away," and
the boys saw them no more.