“No, Matilda, you need not be afraid, he cannot hurt me, for he has no sting. Mrs. Roberts told me that was a vulgar error.” “Did you tell Alfred that?” Matilda inquired, turning to Mrs. Roberts; “but how can that be when I see it? and he is pushing it out every moment in a most frightful manner; only look, Mrs. Roberts.” “Yes, I see what you mean, Matilda; but that movement in its body is only the effort the poor dragon-fly is making to escape; it is a perfectly harmless insect, for it has no instrument with which it can sting.” “Then if you are quite sure of that,” Matilda said, eagerly, “I should like to look at him nearer. Stop, Alfred, and let me see. Oh! what a beautiful creature he is, and with four such lovely wings; when the sun shines upon them they seem to change colour like mother-of-pearl. Now that I know he has no sting I think him a perfect beauty, and before I used to run away from a dragon-fly as if it had been a wild beast; and they do look rather fierce though they are beautiful, for they have such a way of darting down so suddenly. Sometimes I have watched them flying across the pond at the bottom of the garden, and they dart down so low, they seem as if they were dropping into the water.” “Yes,” Mrs. Roberts observed, “that is because they chiefly live upon water insects; with those large eyes they can discern their prey at a great distance, and then dart down upon it; but it is a bold insect and a voracious one also, and I have seen it sometimes attack a butterfly fully as large as itself and tear it to pieces. It lives, however, chiefly on small water insects, and seizes upon them as they skim along the surface of the water; but another reason why one so often sees dragon-flies in the neighbourhood of ponds and ditches is, that the dragon-fly itself passes its young state in the water, and those small ones which you have often seen near ponds are those which have just left their former state and become winged insects.” “Yes, I know all about that,” Alfred said; “Mrs. Roberts told me about the larva and about the pupa skin, like a little box, that they crawl out of, and then fly off; it was very interesting. Now I will let this one fly away, and show you what she has made for me, I hid it behind that big flower-pot till I required it again; see, it is a little net of coarse muslin, sewed round this circle of wire, and I fixed the pole to it myself; it is for fishing in the pond for larva. Mrs. Roberts, might we go now and try for some, and then you could tell Cousin Leila and Matilda more about it?” [Illustration: LEILA AT HOME, Page 202.] Mrs. Roberts gave a willing assent, and to the pond they all proceeded. “Now, Alfred,” Matilda said, “do give me the net; I daresay you have had it for a long time to-day, and I should like so much to fish for larva, for I want so much to know what larva is.”