Rover the dog left a bone only half cleaned under the fence, and forgot
to go for it again, so Mrs. Fly laid her eggs on it. In a day or two
the eggs hatched out into tiny white creatures with no legs. They ate
hard for a few days at the meat left on the bone, and then settled down
and kept still while they changed into flies. When they broke their
way out of their old skins you would hardly believe they had once been
white and helpless, for now they were dark in colour, with wings that
gleamed as they moved, and wonderful eyes and feelers and legs.
Fanny Fly was one of them. She was a beauty. Her eyes were big and
red-brown in colour, and so wonderfully made that she could see behind
her just as well as in front. From each side of her chest two fine
wings sprang out, gleaming with green and red; under them were her two
balancers. On her back she wore a shining purple cloak. She had six
legs, all jointed so that she could bend them in any direction, and all
furnished with the most wonderful things, claws and suckers for holding
on to the roof, and tiny combs and brushes for keeping herself neat and
clean.
She flew first to the garden and sucked honey with her short tongue
from any flowers that were not too deep. Then through an open window
she flew into the house. "Here I shall have a good time," she said;
and a good time she certainly did have.
She melted sugar in the basin with the juice from her mouth, so that
she could suck it up; she sipped honey and treacle from the jars in the
pantry that were left uncovered for even a moment; she stood on the
meat and sucked juices out of that. Nothing came amiss to her.
Whatever was there became food to her, so she was always fat and happy.
She played with the other flies on the window-panes and across the
ceiling; they all danced in the air and buzzed till they were tired.
She had many narrow escapes--from spiders in dark corners, from
dusters, and from small boys who wished to catch her. Once she was
nearly drowned in a dish of jam. On the whole, however, she had a very
good time.
But the summer drew to an end, and the winter came. "I must find a
snug corner, or I shall die of cold," said Fanny Fly.
She looked for a hiding place in the house, but the best corners had
all been taken by other flies; so she slipped out through the window
and crawled into a clump of grass roots and stalks under the hedge.
There she went to sleep till the warm days came again.