"The picking does not trouble us so much as the feeding, Josef. We have never done that. How many times must we feed the worms?" "At the beginning three times a day; and never forget that the young worms must have the youngest and most tender leaves. Later they will need the tougher ones, with more solid food elements in them, but not at first." "They are pretty fussy, aren't they, Josef?" laughed Marie. "Lots more particular about their food than we are. Mother makes us eat what is set before us, and never allows us to argue as to whether we like it or not; sometimes it isn't what we'd rather have, either." "But you manage to live and grow fat on it just the same," grinned the old servant. "Now your silkworms wouldn't. They'd die, and that would be the end of them. Of course some varieties are more robust than others; but they all have to have the same care." "I didn't know there was more than one kind of silkworm!" exclaimed Marie in surprise. "Of course there are," Pierre retorted. "Even I knew that. There are lots of kinds, and some make much better silk than others." "Some give more silk, too," Josef put in. "Their cocoons are much larger. The big white worm such as we raise here is one of the most profitable. It has four moultings." "You mean it changes its skin four times?" Marie said. "Just that. It's a queer life it has, isn't it?" mused the man. "First there is the tiny egg; then comes the caterpillar with all its moultings and its ravenous appetite--then follows the spinning of the cocoons; and the long sleep of the chrysalis, or aurelia, as the slumberer inside the cocoon is sometimes called. And last of all is the moth that comes out of the cocoon--when we will let it--and lays hundreds of eggs for future crops of silkworms. What a short, hard-working life it is!" "They are funny creatures anyway," observed Pierre thoughtfully. "They don't seem to want to do any of the things other animals do. Silkworms never crawl about as most caterpillars would. Shouldn't you think that after they were hatched they would like to see where they were and would go crawling all round the room?" "You would think so," replied Josef. "But they don't. They seem to have no wish to move. Perhaps they realize that all their strength must be saved for eating and spinning. Now and then, of course, if they do not find food near at hand when they are first hatched they will bestir themselves until they reach it; they move more at this stage than at any other; and yet they would not move then if they were not hungry. Their chief aim in life seems to be to eat. They are no travelers, that's sure. Even when they emerge from the chrysalis into the moth they use their wings very little, only fluttering a short distance when they are mating." "But suppose, Josef, that one wants to get them somewhere else and they won't go," speculated Marie.