"What a pretty little Dragon-Fly!" it said; "it will be a delightful tit-bit for my little ones."
Snap! it killed the Dragon-Fly with its bill, and flew off with it.
"What a shocking thing!" cried the Water-Lily, as its leaves shook with terror. "Those animals! those animals! They are funny creatures. I do indeed value my quiet, peaceful life. I harm nobody, and nobody wants to pick a quarrel with me. I am very luck—"
It did not finish what it was saying, for at that instant a boat came gliding close by. "What a pretty little Water-Lily!" cried Ellen, who sat in the boat. "I will have it!" She leant over the gunwale and wrenched off the flower. When she had got home she put it in a glass of water, and there it stood for three days among a whole company of other flowers.
"I can't make it out," it said on the morning of the fourth day. "I have not come off a bit better than that miserable Dragon-Fly."
"The flowers are now withered," said Ellen, and she threw them out of the window.
So there lay the Water-Lily with its fine white petals on the dirty ground.
POWDER-POST
By C. A. Stephens
There is a tiny borer which eats seasoned oak wood, boring thousands of minute holes through it till it becomes a mere shell, and turning out a fine white powder known among country folk as "powder-post." When a shovel or a pitchfork-handle snaps suddenly, or an axe-helve or a rake's tail breaks off under no great strain, the farmer says, "'Twas powder-post."