, and I had hopes of keeping
him till spring; but one cold night the furnace fire went out, and in
the morning my pretty swallow-tail lay dead on the window-sill. Wasn't
it a pity?

"Oh," said Florence, "I like to hear about butterflies! Will you please
tell us about some of the other kinds you have kept?"

"Tell us about that big fellow you said every body made a fuss over.
Ce-ce--I can't remember what you called him."

"Cecropia!" said Susie, promptly. "Yes, do, Auntie! if you are not
tired."

If Ruth Elliot had been ever so weary I think she would have forgotten
it at sight of the interested faces of her audience; but in fact she was
not in the least tired, but was as pleased to tell as they were to
listen to the story of

THE CECROPIA MOTH.

"One day in November," she said, "a man who used to do odd jobs about
the place for my father, and whom we always called Josh,--his name was
Joshua Wheeler,--left his work to bring to the house and put into my
hand a queer-looking pod-shaped package firmly fastened to a stout twig.
It was of a rusty gray color and looked as much like a thick wad of
dirty brown paper as any thing I can think of.

"'I found this 'ere cur'us lookin' thing,' he said, 'under a walnut-tree
on the hill yonder, where I was rakin' up leaves--an', thinks I, there's
some kind of a crittur stored away inside, an' Miss Ruth she's crazy
arter bugs an' worms an' sich like varmints, an' mebbe she'd like to see
what comes out o' this 'ere; so I've fetched it along.'

"You may be sure I thanked him heartily and gave him a sixpence besides,
which I am afraid went to buy tobacco. 'Law, Doctor, don't I know it?'
Josh used to reply when my father urged him to break off a habit that
was making a shaky old man of him at sixty; 'don't I know it's a
dretful bad habit; but then you see a body must have somethin' to be
a-chawin' on.'

"But what was in the brown package? That was the question I puzzled my
brains over. I had never seen a cocoon in the least like it before, and
I had no book on entomology to help me. With the point of a needle I
carefully picked away the outer layer till I came to loose silken fibers
that evidently were the covering of an inside case. Whatever was there
was snugly tucked away in a little inner chamber with the key inside,
and I must wait with what patience I could command till he chose to open
the door.

"I kept my precious cocoon all winter in a cold, dry place; but when
warm