A Flight with the Flies.
I don’t suppose Harry could smell the roast beef when he was a mile from home, but sure enough it was done when the boys got there, and they had only just time to get themselves ready before the dinner-bell rang.
“Well, boys, I suppose you have been very quiet,” said Mr Inglis, “and are ready for a good long walk this afternoon?”
“We’re ready for the walk, Papa, but we haven’t been very quiet,” said Philip. “One don’t seem as if one could keep very quiet this fine weather. I never do. I should like to be always out.”
“I shouldn’t,” said Harry, with his mouth full of beef and potato; “I should like to come in when dinner and tea were ready.”
“Well said, Harry!” exclaimed Mr Inglis; “that was certainly not a very polite speech, but there was a good deal of common sense in it; and I don’t think Master Phil, there, would care much about stopping out when it rained. But make haste, boys; we must not stop talking, for there are all the things to get ready, and we have a long walk before us.”
Half an hour after, Mr Inglis and the boys were passing out of the gate, and they soon reached the spot where the lads entered the wood the day they were lost; but this time they kept along the fields by the side; and beautiful those fields looked, and beautiful, too, the wood-side. There were wood anemones and hyacinths by the thousand, spangling the bright green grass here with delicate white, and there with the dark blue bells; while the brionies and honeysuckle clustered in every direction along the dwarf bushes by the side of the wood.
“There he goes,” said Harry, all at once starting off full speed after a sulphur butterfly.
“Stop, stop!” cried Mr Inglis. “Here, Philip, take the net, and go steadily and quietly and see if you cannot catch it, but you must not hurry, or you will send it right away.”
Philip took the green clap-net and went in chase of the beautiful fly which flitted on before him, now stopping, now going on again, and sipping flower after flower. At last he got close enough, and stooping as far forward as he could reach, popped the green gauze net down upon the grass.