“Right is the last thing they think about,” spoke up a stone fly, “but I really care very little whether I’m called Neuroptera, as I was once, or Plecoptera, as I am now. Life is just as uncertain and full of accidents. Why, my friends, it is the greatest wonder I lived to grow up.” She sighed and began to fan her long, fat body with her broad fore wings.
“You know I was once a water baby.”
“Water baby?” repeated Ruth. “Wouldn’t your wings——”
“No they wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Stone Fly, “because I hadn’t any wings then. I was homely, flat, six-legged, and just the colour of the stone under which I spent most of my young life, hiding. I had to hide, or the boys would have found me and used me for bait. Think of it! Bait!”
And Mrs. Stone Fly, quite overcome, could say no more.
“We came to make a few remarks,” said one of a swarm of May flies that had been hovering about, “but we must go now. Life is too short for talking.”
“Poor things,” said Mrs. Lacewing, “life with them is indeed short. No wonder they are called Ephemerida. Think of living only for a day!”
“But they lived a long time as Nymphs,” said the dragon fly, who was still darting about, now here, now there, like a flash of living flame. “I know, because they were water babies like me. They could eat too, then, and the number of times they changed their skins was a caution. Why, my friends, they even change them after they leave the water and have their wings. No other insect does that.”
“Now, my story, in the beginning, is something like theirs. I, too, was born in the bottom of the pond and, no doubt, I played with some of you, or I may have tried to make a meal of you. Well, if I did I failed, and I shouldn’t be blamed for the sins of my youth. All of us eat when we can get the chance, and there’s no use in being sorry for the dinner. I suppose you would like to hear how I managed to get into the pond?” He looked at Ruth, who nodded her head, though she was still laughing at the idea of being sorry for a dinner.
“You see,” explained Mrs. Lacewing, “the dinner might be your nearest relation.”