“Shall I fly away?”
“Oh no. I just want to see your great white wings move in the blue air. But never mind. I can wait till later. Where do you live?”
“Nowhere specially. A settled home is too much of a nuisance. Life didn’t get to be really delightful until I turned into a butterfly. Before that, while I was still a caterpillar, I couldn’t leave the cabbage the livelong day, and all one did was eat and squabble.”
“Just what do you mean?” asked Maya, mystified.
“I used to be a caterpillar,” explained Fred.
“Never!” cried Maya.
“Now, now, now,” said Fred, pointing both feelers straight at Maya. “Everyone knows a butterfly is first a caterpillar. Even human beings know it.”
Maya was utterly perplexed. Could such a thing be?
“You must really explain more clearly,” she said. “I couldn’t accept what you say just so, could I? You wouldn’t expect me to.”
The butterfly perched beside the little bee on the slender swaying branch of the raspberry bush, and they rocked together in the morning wind. He told her how he had begun life as a caterpillar and then, one day, when he had shed his last caterpillar skin, he came out a pupa or chrysalis.