“Well, you see, the whole of me didn’t burst. I simply grew too big for my skin, or my pupa case, as the wise men call it, and it cracked right open. I was climbing on a water plant when this happened, for all at once I had felt a longing to leave the water and get to the open air. My first effort was to get rid of the useless old shell which still clung to me, but I had quite a tussle before I could do so, and afterward I was very weak and tired. But the result was worth all my labour, for I found myself with these four wings, and the rest of my beautiful body, and I needed only to dry myself before sailing away on the wind, the swiftest thing on wings, and the most renowned mosquito killer on record. Of course, my legs aren’t arranged for walking. Why should they be? All six of them go forward, as if they were reaching for something, and so they are, reaching for something to eat. Woe betide any insect I start after. I catch him every time. I ought to, for I have thousands of eyes, and I can fly forward, backward, or any old way. I never stop to eat my dinner either. I hold it, and eat it as I go. Now if I had time, I would tell you how the children of Japan make a holiday, and go out to catch us for pets, and how they sing pretty songs to us and——” “It is about time you stopped,” interrupted Mrs. Ant Lion. “You have tried our patience long enough, and I mean to speak this very minute. I’ve been told I am much like the dragon flies,” she added to the company, “but my babies are not at all like theirs. They do not belong to the water, and I am glad of it. I’m tired of water babies. I’ve heard so much of them to-day. My mother had the good sense to lay her eggs in sand, and I shall do the same. I was hungry from the minute I was hatched, and I would have run after something to eat right away, only I found I couldn’t. My legs were fixed in such a way I had to walk backward.” “Backward?” echoed Ruth. “Yes, backward. So there was nothing to do but to dig a trap for my dinner, and I set about it pretty quick. No one showed me how, either. I simply used my shovel-shaped head, and before long I had made quite a pit, broad and rounded at the top, and sloping to a point like a funnel at the bottom. You have seen them, of course?” “I think I have,” answered Ruth. “They are not hard to find if you keep your eyes open,” went on the ant lion.