“See, Fred!  I am clearing your room up a little.  There are a great many useless things here; why should you keep them?  See; in this box is a dead creature; let’s begin with this, and throw it away”; and as she spoke she carried the box towards a window.

“What are you doing, aunty?” cried the boy.  “That is my very best chrysalis; it will turn into a beautiful moth by and by; one of the finest of our butterflies, with wonderful marks on its wings.”

“What nonsense!” said his aunt.  “This little creature is utterly dead; don’t you see it is stiff and motionless.”

“Don’t you know about caterpillars, aunty dear?” exclaimed the boy, holding fast to his box.  “I’ll tell you about it.  This is a chrysalis; and it seems entirely dead, but it’s only the outside that is dead.  Inside, where we cannot see it, lies something that is alive; and by and by, when the time comes, this shell will be cast off, for there will be no farther use for it, and out will fly a new lovely creature with exquisite wings.”

“But, Fred, I don’t understand how that can be possible!  How can a poor worm, that only crawls about all its life, die, and then suddenly turn into a beautiful new creature with wings, and fly away leaving its old body behind?  Do you understand it, Fred?”

“No, I don’t understand it, but I know it’s so.”

“Well, my dear boy,” said his aunt, seriously, “what if there was something hidden within little Nora, which was alive too, and which, leaving the poor dead shell behind, has flown on shining wings away to distant heights, where it is entering on a new and happy life!”

Fred stood thoughtful a few moments, and then said, “I never thought of it in that way, aunty.  Now I shall have a very different idea about Nora.  How glad she must be to fly away on her new wings from the sick body in which she was imprisoned!  Are not you glad, aunty, that you know about the chrysalis, and isn’t it wonderful?”

“It certainly is; and it teaches us that there are many things about us that we cannot understand, and yet which are true, though no one can explain them.  So by and by, Fred, when you are a learned man, as I hope you will be, when you come to something you cannot understand in nature, you must say modestly, ’This is beyond my powers of explanation; this is the work of God’; and so stand reverently before his greatness, that is about and above us all.”

Fred handled his chrysalis with respect as he laid it away with his other treasures.  A new thought had come to him about that and about other things.