what she paid me."

If there was money to be got in the tobacco-worm business, Roy wanted a
share in it; and before night he brought to Miss Ruth, in an old tin
basin, eight worms of various sizes, from a tiny baby worm just hatched,
to a great, ugly creature, jet black, and spotted and barred with
yellow. The black worm Miss Ruth consented to keep, and Roy, lifting him
by his horn, dropped him on the green worm's back.

"Now you have a Blacky and a Greeny," the boy said; and by these names
they were called.

Roy and Sammy came together the next morning, and watched the worms at
their breakfast.

"How they eat!" said Sammy; "they make their great jaws go like a couple
of old tobacco-chewers."

"Yes; and if they lived on bread and butter 't would cost a lot to feed
'em, wouldn't it?" said Roy.

"Look at my woodbine worm, boys," Miss Ruth said, as she lifted the
cover of another box. "Isn't he a beauty? See the delicate green, shaded
to white, on his back, and that row of spots down his sides looking like
buttons! I call him Sly-boots, because he has a trick of hiding under
the leaves. He used to have a horn on his tail like the tobacco worms."

"Where that spot is, that looks like an eye?"

"Yes; and one day he ate nothing and hid himself away, and looked so
strangely that I thought he was going to die; but the next morning he
appeared in this beautiful new coat."

"How funny! Say, what is he going to turn into?"

But Miss Ruth was busy house-cleaning. First she turned out her tenants.
They were at breakfast; but they took their food with them, and did not
mind. Then she tipped their house upside down, and brushed out every
stick and stem and bit of leaf, spread thick brown paper on the floor,
and put back Greeny and Blacky snug and comfortable.

The next time Sammy and Roy met at the parsonage, three flower-pots of
moist sand stood in a row under the bench.

"Winter quarters," Miss Ruth explained when she saw the boys looking at
them; "and it's about time for my tenants to move in. Greeny and Blacky
have stopped eating, and Sly-boots is turning pale."

"A worm turn pale!"

"Yes, indeed; look at him."

It was quite true; the green on his back had changed to gray-white, and
his pretty spots were fading.

"He looks awfully; is he going to die?"

"Yes--and no. Come this afternoon and see what will happen."

But when they came, Blacky and Sly-boots were not to be seen. Their
summer residence, empty a