"Well, I can't help it. I must have him. I want to see him hatch; and I shall plant a bullrush for him to climb up."
"I found a caddis-worm, with a beautifully built house, in the roots of the Water-Soldier, and I'm going to look along the edge for some shells. We must have shell-fish, you know, to keep the aquarium clean. Oh!"
"What is it, Molly? What have you found?"
"Oh, such a lovely spider! A water-spider—a scarlet spider. He's very small, but such a colour! Francis dear, may I keep him all to myself? I don't think I can let him go in with the others. If the dragon-fly larva ate him, I should never forgive myself, and you know you don't know for certain that the beetle is Hydröus piceus. I shall give him an aquarium of his very own in a green finger-glass, with nothing but a little very nice duckweed, and one small snail to keep it clean, like a general servant. May I, Francis?"
"By all means. I don't want your scarlet spider. I can get lots more." He went on dipping with the colander, and she began to dig up water-plants and lay them in a heap. I sat and watched them, but the Ranatra got nervous and tried to go below. As usual, the dry bristles in his tail would not pierce the water without a struggle, and after floundering in the most ludicrous fashion for a few minutes, he fell straight into the colander, and was put into one of the pickle-jars.
"I've got enough now," said the boy, "and I want to go home and see about my net. I must have some fish. Can you carry the plants, Molly?"
"I'll manage," said Molly. "Now I'm ready."
"Wait a minute, though—I'd forgotten the beetle."
When I heard this I dropped into the water; but somehow or other I turned over very clumsily, and, like the Ranatra, I fell through into the colander, and was transferred to a pickle-jar.
Anything more disagreeable than being shaken up in a glass bottle, with beetles, and boatmen, and larvæ of all sorts and sizes, including a dragon-fly in the second stage of his career, I can hardly imagine. When they took us out and put us into the glass pond, matters were certainly better, though there is a vast difference between a glass pond and a pond in a wood.