My catching the pair at dinner was not an accident; I soon found out that they lived there, and had settled upon a row of tall raspberry bushes that separated the garden from the lawn for their summer home. Madam was already at work collecting her building materials, and very soon the fragile walls of her pretty nest were formed in an upright crotch of the raspberries, about a foot below the top. Naturally, I was greatly interested in the fairy house building, and often inspected the work while the little dame was out of sight. One day, however, as I was about to part the branches to look in, I heard an anxious "phit," and glanced up to see the owner alight on the lowest limb of a peach-tree near by. Of course I turned away at once, pretending that I was just passing, and had no suspicion of her precious secret in the raspberries, and hoping that she would not mind. But she did mind, very seriously; she continued to stand on that branch with an aggrieved air, as if life were no longer worth living, now that her home was perhaps discovered. Without uttering a sound or moving a muscle, so far as I could see, she remained for half an hour before she accepted my taking a distant seat and turning my attention to dragonflies as an apology, and ventured to visit her nest again. After that I made very sure that she was engaged elsewhere before I paid my daily call. The dragonflies, by the way, were well worth looking at; indeed, they divided my interest with the birds. So many and such variety I never noticed elsewhere, and they acted exactly like fly-catching birds, staying an hour at a time on one perch, from which every now and then they sallied out, sweeping the air and returning to the perch they had left. Sometimes I saw four or five of them at once, resting on different dead twigs in the yard the other side of the lawn, and I have even seen one knock a fellow-dragonfly off a favorite perch and take it himself. They were very beautiful, too: some with wings of transparent white or light amber barred off by wide patches of rich dark brown or black; others, again, smaller, and all over blue as the lazuli's head; and a third of brilliant silver, which sparkled as it flew, as if covered with spangles. One alighted there with wings which seemed to be covered with a close and intricate design in the most brilliant gold thread. I went almost near enough to put my hand on him, and I never saw a more gorgeous creature; beside his beautiful wings his back was of old gold, coming down in scallops over the black and dark blue under part. In due time four lovely blue eggs filled the nest of the lazuli, and about the middle of June madam began to sit, and I had to be more careful than ever in timing my visits.