"
"Don't cry, Molly! Please don't cry! I dare say the spider is there,
only it's so small."
For some time Molly poked carefully here and there, but the spider was
not to be found, and the contents of the aquarium were carried back to
the wood.
I was very glad to see the pond again. The water-gnats were taking
dimensions as usual, a blue-black beetle sat humming on the stake, and
dragon-flies flitted hungrily about, like splinters of a broken
rainbow; but the Water-Soldier's place was empty, and it was never
refilled. He was the only specimen.
Molly was probably in the right when, after a last vain search for the
scarlet spider, as Francis slowly emptied the pail, she said with a
sigh,
"What makes me so very sorry is, that I don't think we ought to have
'collected' things unless we had really attended to them, and knew how
to keep them alive."
FOOTNOTES:
Footnote D: Water-soldier--_Stratiotes aloides._ A handsome and rare
plant, of aloe-like appearance, with a white blossom rising in the
centre of its sword-leaves.
AMONG THE MERROWS.
A SKETCH OF A GREAT AQUARIUM.
I remember the time when I, and a brother who was with me, devoutly
believed in a being whom we supposed to live among certain black,
water-rotted, weed-grown stakes by the sea.
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