care, live to a marvelous old age--some of them even reaching the dignity of two or three hundred years. But unless snails and other destructive grubs were kept away the trees would not thrive. The finer and more carefully grafted they were the greater the damage resulting from hungry insects. In contrast the wild mulberry with its acid and bitter sap presented far less temptation and therefore lived longer than did the cultivated species. This and many another lesson did the father of Marie and Pierre have to learn before he could successfully raise mulberry trees--to say nothing of silkworms. He must know how to prepare the mulberry seeds by crushing the fruit, covering the pulp with water, and separating the seeds from the waste part of the berry. He must know, too, how to spread the seeds upon cloth and lay them in the sun to dry, after which they were put away in covered jars, secure from air and moisture, and stored in some dark place until needed for planting. To Marie and Pierre, brought up amid the environment of many a mulberry grove, these facts were an old story, and how fortunate it was that this was so. Now that their father and Uncle Jacques had gone to the war most of the care of the silkworms would fall to them. There was, to be sure, Josef the old gardener--he could give advice; but he was too old and crippled to do much work. And therefore it was the two children, together with their mother, who were planning for their first harvest of cocoons, and were eagerly awaiting the unfurling of the mulberry leaves before beginning to hatch out their crop of silkworm eggs. How anxiously they had watched the trees! How eagerly scanned the swelling buds! Ah, it could not be long now. Was not the river a torrent from the melting of the winter's snows? Was not the sun warmer, the heaven bluer, the ground fragrant as if newly awake? Soon the mulberry trees would be sending forth their leaves. Until they did, however, it would be useless to hatch the eggs so carefully laid away, for there would be no food to give the ravenous little spinners should they rouse from their long sleep. And so Marie, and Pierre, and their mother strove to be patient, contenting themselves in the meantime with preparing the empty rooms of the silk-house, where the caterpillars were to be raised. Many a time they had not only seen this done but had assisted in the process. Every step of the work was familiar. They knew well that the labor of making the place immaculate was far from wasted, for unless the rooms were spotless the fastidious spinners would either sicken and die, or would refuse to fashion their wonderful webs.