t. Its
ceiling was panelled with worked timber, and its floor beautifully
inlaid with woods of various hue, whilst the walls were thickly
covered with pictures, chiefly sea-pieces, and all by good masters. He
had, however, but little time to look about him, for a door opened at
the further end of the room, and admitted the portly person of Miss
Terry, arrayed in a gigantic sun hat and a pair of green spectacles.
She seemed very hot, and held in her hand a piece of brown paper,
inside of which something was violently scratching.

"I've caught him at last," she said, "though he did avoid me all last
year. I've caught him."

"Good gracious! caught what?" asked Arthur, with great interest.

"What! why him that Mildred wanted," she replied, regardless of
grammar in her excitement. "Just look at him, he's beautiful."

Thus admonished, Arthur carefully undid the brown paper, and next
moment started back with an exclamation, and began to dance about with
an enormous red beetle grinding its jaws into his finger.

"Oh, keep still, do, pray," called Miss Terry, in alarm, "don't shake
him off on any account, or we shall lose him for the want of a little
patience, as I did when he bit my finger last year. If you'll keep him
quite still, he won't leave go, and I'll ring for John to bring the
chloroform bottle."

Arthur, feeling that the interests of science were matters of a higher
importance than the well-being of his finger, obeyed her injunction to
the letter, hanging his arm (and the beetle) over the back of a chair
and looking the picture of silent misery.

"Quite still, if you please, Mr. Heigham, quite still; is not the
animal's tenacity interesting?"

"No doubt to you, but I hope your pet beetle is not poisonous, for he
is gnashing his pincers together inside my finger."

"Never mind, we will treat you with caustic presently. Mildred, don't
laugh so much, but come and look at him; he's lovely. John, please be
quick with that chloroform bottle."

"If this sort of thing happens often, I don't think that I should
collect beetles from choice, at least not large ones," groaned Arthur.

"Oh, dear," laughed Mrs. Carr, "I never saw anything so absurd. I
don't know which looks most savage, you or the beetle."

"Don't make all that noise, Mildred, you will frighten him, and if
once he flies we shall never catch him in this big room."

Here, fortunately for Arthur, the servant arrived with the required
bottle, into which