about their value, of course, and she thrust her hateful brush right in and destroyed them all.  She is a savage, an ignorant savage.  I did as you told me, dear aunty.  Not one tiny little frog even have I carried in my pockets, not even a beetle; and this is the result.  I will not tell you all the things I had found; I couldn’t bear to describe them.  Two such beauties of beetles—­bright red wings, the body lilac blue, and glittering as any precious stone!  Such a rare species!  And an oleander-sphinx!  And my magnificent caterpillar of the humming-bird moth!—­you know, aunty, that one with yellow stripes and blue eye-spots.  All trodden to death on the floor.

I must stop; the longer I think of it, the worse I feel.  I will say one thing though.  You may call a person “Aunty,” but that doesn’t make her one.  When we first came here, I used to say to Fani, when he wanted anything, “Why don’t you go and ask Aunt Clarissa?” and he answered more than a dozen times, “That isn’t allowed here.”  So at last I understood, and as I didn’t want to lead him to do anything out of the way, I didn’t say it any more.  But now you see the difference between a real aunt and a make-believe one.  There is nothing in the world that we can’t ask you.  If you can’t do it, you say so, and there’s the end of it.  But that’s no reason for not asking another time; there is always something to ask, and you understand that, and don’t expect us to stop asking just because you have to say no sometimes.  Now, this whole trouble comes from this; for when I asked Fani to ask Aunt Clarissa to give me some twenty or thirty old boxes to keep my specimens in, he said it was not proper to ask for so many things, and I could pack them in paper.  Just think of that!  To wrap living creatures up in paper!  Of course Fani doesn’t understand anything about such things.

Now what I want you to do, dear aunty, is to write in your next letter that we are to come home; it is high time.  It is four weeks since we came, and that is long enough to be away from home; for home is the best place in the whole world.  There are plenty of boxes to be had there, and everything that you want, and there are nice places for things, and there isn’t such danger of accidents.  And if anything does go wrong, you are there, aunty, and in a minute it is set right again.  Do write and say that we may leave here on Saturday, and then on Sunday we shall be at home again.  How glad we shall be!  Good-bye, dear aunty; your ever-loving nephew,

     FRED.

The evening came; lovely and bright.  Under the three oaks were assembled the two Fink boys, the baker’s son from Lucerne, the shoemaker’s apprentice from Uri, the hotel porter from Schwyz, and Feklitus!  Oscar stood in the midst with his banner, and looked sharply in every direction, for it was almost six o’clock and neither Fred nor Fani was in sight.  The clock struck; five, ten minutes passed, and they did not come.