“I’ve got half-a-dozen at least; and the last sweep I went very low, quite in the mud, and I’ve got some most horrid things.  There’s one of them like a flat-iron, with pincers at the point.”

“That’s a water-scorpion.  Oh, Francis! he eats dreadfully.”

“I don’t believe he can, he’s so flat.  Molly, is that nasty-looking thing a dragon-fly larva?”

“I believe it is; for there is the mask.  You know his face is so ugly nothing would come near him if he didn’t wear a mask.  Then he lifts it up and snaps suddenly; he really does eat everything!”

“Well, I can’t help it.  I must have him.  I want to see him hatch; and I shall plant a bullrush for him to climb up.”

“I found a caddis-worm, with a beautifully built house, in the roots of the Water-Soldier, and I’m going to look along the edge for some shells.  We must have shell-fish, you know, to keep the aquarium clean.  Oh!”

“What is it, Molly?  What have you found?”

“Oh, such a lovely spider!  A water-spider—­a scarlet spider.  He’s very small, but such a colour!  Francis dear, may I keep him all to myself?  I don’t think I can let him go in with the others.  If the dragon-fly larva ate him, I should never forgive myself, and you know you don’t know for certain that the beetle is Hydroeus piceus.  I shall give him an aquarium of his very own in a green finger-glass, with nothing but a little very nice duckweed, and one small snail to keep it clean, like a general servant.  May I, Francis?”

“By all means.  I don’t want your scarlet spider.  I can get lots more.”  He went on dipping with the colander, and she began to dig up water-plants and lay them in a heap.  I sat and watched them, but the Ranatra got nervous and tried to go below.  As usual, the dry bristles in his tail would not pierce the water without a struggle, and after floundering in the most ludicrous fashion for a few minutes, he fell straight into the colander, and was put into one of the pickle-jars.

“I’ve got enough now,” said the boy, “and I want to go home and see about my net.  I must have some fish.  Can you carry the plants, Molly?”

“I’ll manage,” said Molly.  “Now I’m ready.”

“Wait a minute, though—­I’d forgotten the beetle.”

When I heard this I dropped into the water; but somehow or other I turned over very clumsily, and, like the Ranatra, I fell through into the colander, and was transferred to a pickle-jar.

Anything more disagreeable than being shaken up in a glass bottle, with beetles, and boatmen, and larvae of all sorts and sizes, including a dragon-fly in the second stage of his career, I can hardly imagine.  When they took us out and put us into the glass pond, matters were certainly better, though there is a vast difference between a glass pond and a pond in a wood.