"BAH! ugh! oh!" cried little Tom. "There's a worm in my red apple,
mamma."
"Is he a pretty worm?" asked his mamma, looking up from her sewing.
"Pretty, mamma! Who ever heard of a worm being pretty? No, no! he's a
horrid crawling thing. I sha'n't eat any more of the apple. I couldn't,
now I've seen him in it."
"Let me see him," said mamma: so Tommy brought the apple to his mother.
"Why, yes, he's a beauty," said she. "Just look at that little red cap
he wears, and see how soft and white his skin is. If nobody had picked
that apple, he would have spun a little rope from out his body, and let
himself down from the high tree, down, down, to the earth.
"Then he would have crawled into a little hole in the ground. When he
had covered himself all over with a gray sheet, he would sleep, sleep,
sleep. But by and by he would awaken.
"He would come out of the tight shroud, and find that he had airy, gauzy
wings with which he could fly: so he would go flitting and fluttering up
into the warm sunshine to find an apple-blossom."
"What would he want of an apple-blossom?" asked Tommy, much interested
now in his apple-worm.
"Oh, to lay an egg in," said mamma. "And, when the apple-blossoms grew,
the egg would be softly wrapped within its pink heart. And when the
blossom turned into an apple there would be a tiny baby-worm to feed
upon the white pulp. Then some day, perhaps, some other little boy would
exclaim, 'Bah! ugh! oh!' about him, as my little boy did just now about
the mamma-worm."
"Oh!" said Tom thoughtfully. "I'm glad nobody will have that chance:
here goes."
And he tossed the apple, worm and all, out of the window.