bits by
someone calling: "Hey! You there! Stop!"

"Tumble for your life!" cried George, and tumbled as before, stopping in
the only possible way, and Jane stopped on top of him, and they crawled
to the edge and came suddenly on a butterfly collector, who was looking
for specimens with a pair of blue glasses and a blue net and a blue book
with colored plates.

"Excuse me," said the collector, "but have you such a thing as a needle
about you--a very long needle?"

"I have a needle _book_," replied Jane, politely, "but there aren't any
needles in it now. George took them all to do the things with pieces of
cork--in the 'Boy's Own Scientific Experimenter' and 'The Young
Mechanic.' He did not do the things, but he did for the needles."

"Curiously enough," said the collector, "I too wish to use the needle in
connection with cork."

"I have a hatpin in my hood," said Jane. "I fastened the fur with it
when it caught in the nail on the greenhouse door. It is very long and
sharp--would that do?"

"One could but try," said the collector, and Jane began to feel for the
pin. But George pinched her arm and whispered, "Ask what he wants it
for." Then the collector had to own that he wanted the pin to stick
through the great Arctic moth, "a magnificent specimen," he added,
"which I am most anxious to preserve."

And there, sure enough, in the collector's butterfly net sat the great
Arctic moth, listening attentively to the conversation.

"Oh, I couldn't!" cried Jane. And while George was explaining to the
collector that they would really rather not, Jane opened the blue folds
of the butterfly net, and asked the moth quietly if it would please step
outside for a moment. And it did.

When the collector saw that the moth was free, he seemed less angry than
grieved.

"Well, well," said he, "here's a whole Arctic expedition thrown away! I
shall have to go home and fit out another. And that means a lot of
writing to the papers and things. You seem to be a singularly
thoughtless little girl."

So they went on, leaving him too, trying to go uphill towards the
Crystal Palace.

When the great white Arctic moth had returned thanks in a suitable
speech, George and Jane took a sideways slanting run and started sliding
again, between the star-lamps along the great slide toward the North
Pole. They went faster and faster, and the lights ahead grew brighter
and brighter--so that they could not keep their eyes open, but had to
blink