rfect ecstacy of curiosity to see what the girls
had caught. When I carefully took off the hat, I found the water had
all leaked out, and his monstership lay kicking and crawling at the
bottom.

"Ho! ho! ho!" shouted Willie, "is that what-cher call a curiosity?"

"Oh, Flossie! you have been dreadfully taken in," said Regy.

"Oh, no," I said, "it's this wonderful animal that's been 'taken in,'
and he's going to be kept in, too."

I began to feel, though, that there was a great laugh somewhere in the
future, and that it was coming at our expense.

"Why, Flossie! it's nothing but a baby crab," said Regy. "I can get a
peck of them in an hour, over in the river."

I felt greatly chagrined, and blushed with mortification. The boys
kept bursting out laughing every few minutes, asking such questions
as:

[Illustration: HOW MANY GIRLS DID IT TAKE TO LAND HIM?]

"How many girls did it take to land him?" "Was he gamey, Flossie?"
"Did ye bait him with a clam-shell, or an old boot? they'll snap at
any thing."

"Oh! I'd given away my dinner to have been there!" and then Regy would
stir him up with a stick, and turn him on his back, all of which
caused me to scream every time, and sent tremors all over me.

"What-cher goin' to do with him?" inquired Willie.

"I shall study his habitudes, and improve my knowledge of the
crustacea," said I, giving him a sentence directly out of my
text-book. "I shall look at him every day."

"Yes, and he'll look at you every night. I have read a book that told
about a traveler that offended a crab once, and he informed the other
crabs, and they all made for him at night, and twenty thousand of them
came that night and crept under his tent, and sat there and looked at
him. And there he was in the middle of them, and you know their eyes
are fastened in their heads by a string, and they can throw them out
of their heads and draw them back again; and, at a signal, they all
threw their eyes at him. He was so horrified that night, that he got
insane and had to be sent to a lunatic asylum."

"I've heard your stories before, Regy, and I simply don't credit them.
We girls are going to hunt up a pond to put him in, where we can pet
him, and educate him."

"You'd best hunt up a frying pan to put him in; he's capital eating
for breakfast, well browned, with hard-boiled eggs and parsley round
him," said Reginald.

I told him if he couldn't do any better than to lie there and make an
exhibition of