After she had put as many as thirty or forty in their prison she found it was quite hard to put one in without another coming out, and she did not get along quite as fast. Before the bell rang for study hour, however, she had captured fifty-five, and fifty-five caterpillars looked like a great many when Ruby carefully opened one side of the box and peeped in. Ruby wrote upon the top of the box, in her very best hand, "For Miss Ketchum, with Ruby's love," and then she punched little holes in the cover that her caterpillars might have some air to breathe.
She ran upstairs to Miss Ketchum's room, which was over one end of the schoolhouse, and knocked at the door, which was partly opened. No one answered, and Ruby knocked again. She pushed the door open a little farther and looked in, and found that Miss Ketchum had gone out. She was to have charge of the study hour that afternoon, and she had probably gone downstairs. Ruby laid the box on the bureau, and ran away as the bell rang to call the scholars together, feeling quite delighted at the thought of Miss Ketchum's happiness when she should find so large an addition to her "menagerie," as the girls called it. She thought she would not tell Miss Ketchum about it, but let her have the pleasure of a surprise when she should go up to her room. Of all the little girls, no one studied more diligently than Ruby that afternoon, for she wanted to make up for the morning in every way that she could; and the thought of the caterpillars walking about in their prison, all ready to make Miss Ketchum happy when she should find them, made Ruby very glad; so she felt like singing a little song as she studied her grammar, and looked out the map questions in her geography.
The day which had begun so disastrously was going to have a very pleasant ending after all, and Ruby no longer felt as if she must go home. When the girls had come into the school-room after recess Miss Ketchum had said what Ruby had not in the least expected her to say, that she had found out why Ruby laughed, and if she had known sooner she would not have sent her out of the class for it, as she felt as if it was her own fault instead of Ruby's, and that therefore, she should give Ruby perfect marks for deportment, since she had not intended to make any disorder during school-time. Ruby was so grateful to Miss Ketchum for thus clearing her before the school that she made up her mind that she would never, never give her teacher the least bit of trouble, but would always be good, and learn her lessons perfectly, so that she should never have any occasion to reprove her.
CHAPTER XIX.
SURPRISES.
When Ruby went to bed that night her last thought was of the caterpillars and of the pleasure they would give her teacher, and she was impatient for the morning to come that she might have Miss Ketchum tell her how much she had enjoyed them.
Miss Ketchum did not go up to her room after study hour, but after supper she went up for something, intending to return to the sitting-room at once, as she had charge of the girls that evening. It was almost dark in her room, but she did not stop to light the lamp, as she knew where to get her work-basket in the dark. In passing the bureau she put out her hand and knocked something off, but stooping down on the floor and picking it up again, she concluded that it was merely an empty paper-box, such as Mrs. Boardman often put in her room when she found one, to use as a home for her pets. The cover rolled away, but Miss Ketchum did not stop to look for it, and went down to the sitting room again.
Of course you can guess what happened. Whether the caterpillars were asleep or not when the box fell, I could not tell you, but after that they were certainly very wide-awake, for they travelled out of the box and all over the room. Before Miss Ketchum had come up to go to bed they had made their way all over the room. There were some of them on the ceiling, some crawling over the white counter-pane on Miss Ketchum's bed, some upon her pillow, and a very fat, large caterpillar, that Ruby had found upon a tomato-plant, had crept up on the looking-glass and had gone to sleep there.