CHAPTER VIII
MRS. TUMBLE BUG AND OTHERS
Their wings with azure green
And purple glossed.
—Anna L. Barbauld.
Something exciting was going on. Ruth could not tell just what it was at first. She could only watch and wonder. Then her eyes grew large and bright. Surely some fairy’s wand had touched the old orchard, for suddenly it seemed alive with beetles—big beetles and little beetles; beetles in sober colourings, and beetles gleaming with all the tints of the rainbow. Ruth had never dreamed that there could be so many of them or that they were so beautiful.
The gorgeously coloured, graceful tigers attracted her first, though she didn’t know their name.
“Oh,” she cried, “how lovely!”
“And how strange,” added a voice just above her head, “how very strange, their children should be so homely.”