“It isn’t hard when one has a nice set of bristles, as I have to help me along.” The earthworm was one who saw the best side of everything. “I am made up of more than a hundred rings,” he went on, “and on each are small stiff hair-like bristles so, though I have neither eyes, ears, hands, nor feet, I am quite independent. I can move very fast, and the slime that covers me keeps the earth from sticking to me. Do you know I am the only jointed animal that has red blood? It is so. I do no harm, either, to growing things, and I help to build the world. My tunnels let air into the ground and help to keep it loose. I also bring up rich soil from below, and lay it on the surface. I also——” “Well, that’s enough,” interrupted the cicada, moving his wings impatiently. “I thought you wanted to see _my_ relations?” he added to Ruth. “So I do,” answered Ruth. “Where are they?” “There are a number of them right in this meadow, though you would never think it, to look at them. They are not at all like me. See that white froth clinging to those grass stems? A cousin made that. Of the sap of the plant too. If you look, you will find her in the midst of it. She is green and speckled and very small. Then there are the tree hoppers, as funny in shape as brownies, and the leaf hoppers. They are all my cousins. The aphides too. Of course you know the aphides?” “I believe they were the things Mrs. Lacewing told me I should learn about later,” said Ruth, with sudden remembrance. “Very likely. Mrs. Lacewing’s children should know about them. The aphides are very bad, though they are so very tiny. But what they lack in size they make up in numbers. Really there are millions of them. They are not travellers, either, but stay just where they are hatched, and suck, suck, suck. In that way they kill many plants, for it is the sap of the plant, its life juice, which serves them for food. They eat so much of this that their bodies can’t hold it all, and what they don’t need is given off as honey dew. The ants like this honey so well that to get it they take good care of the aphides. But there are some aphides which do not give off honey dew. Do you see this white stuff on the alder bushes?” “Yes. I’ve often seen it before, too. It looks like soft white fringe.” “Well, it isn’t. It is a lot of aphides, each with a tuft of wool on its body, and a beak fast stuck in the alder stem.” They had now reached the pond, which lay smiling in the sunshine. “It would be so pretty,” said Ruth, throwing herself down on the grass, “if it wasn’t for the horrid, green, oozy stuff all over it.”