“The rest of the world tried hard to induce China to give their secret of silk-making but to no avail, so the Emperor Justinian sent some young monks to China to study and to get the secret. After some years they went back to Constantinople with enough eggs of the silk-worm butterfly in their hollow pilgrim staffs to begin raising them. “But even after they had the eggs it was not easy to raise them as the children of Mr. and Mrs. Bombyx Mori can only be raised where the mulberry tree will grow.” “After they get the cocoons how do they get the silk unwound?” asked the boy named Billy. “That’s interesting,” said Somebody. “I had a chance to see the process at the Panama Pacific Fair. When the worm is ready to spin, and has shed his coat four times, he is about three weeks old. Then he hangs himself on the limb of the tree which has nourished him, and begins to spin. He moves his head around for three whole days, spinning two threads at the same time, until he is completely covered, when he stops spinning and starts to transform. He has spun about 1,200 yards of double-threaded silk. Of course he must not live to emerge so after three or four days he is put in a gently heated oven until he is dead. Then he is immersed in hot water and stirred with a long-handled brush until the ends of the threads are loosened, when he is put into another pan of hot water with several other cocoons and the ends of the threads are passed through an eyelet to keep them from tangling and are wound upon spools or reels into pale golden skeins of what is called raw silk. Afterward it is bleached and colored and woven into webs,” said Somebody. “That’s got any fairy story beaten a mile,” said Billy. “I’d really like to try out that process with Lady Luna’s cocoon, but she is such a beauty after she comes out that it would be too bad to destroy her.” “Indeed it would,” said Somebody, “and we’ve got to have beauty as well as utility in this world, Billy.” “Sure,” said Billy grinning, but he understood. [Illustration: The Fairies in the West of England are very careful of the Strawberry Crop] All we know about Strawberries “Strawberries and cream for supper,” sang out the boy named Billy, “wild ones. Got ’em over in the clearing in the woods where the fire ran through last year. Whoppers! I wonder how they ever got there, and why do we call them strawberries? They are far from being the color of straw. Just look at my hands.” “Look at your face, too, Billy,” laughed Somebody. “You surely did splash.” “Guess I did,” said Billy, as he repaired the damage. “I couldn’t resist those strawberries. Where did they get the name from?” “Nobody knows--at least nobody whom I have been able to trace,” said Somebody. “I’ve always been interested in that question myself, and I’ve consulted many authorities and have found out just exactly as much as the two people found out from each other in the early English rhyme, which goes: