The first day it was by no means a bad imitation of a real pond, except for the want of a bed of mud.  Molly had covered the bottom of the glass with gravel which she had steadily washed till water would run clear from it, in spite of the impatient exclamations of Francis, that it “would do now,” and quite regardless of the inconvenience to which I was subjected by being kept in the pickle-jar.  In this gravel she had embedded the roots of some Water Crowfoot and other pond-plants.  The stones in the middle were nicely arranged, and well covered with moss and water-weeds.  When water had been poured in up to the brim of the bell-glass, and we had been emptied out of the jars, the dragon-fly larva got into a good hole among the stones and ate most of the May-fly grubs, water-shrimps, and so forth, as they came into sight.  I did not do badly myself, and only the bigger and stronger members of our society and a few skins were there next day, when Francis brought a jar full of minnows, a small carp, and a bull’s-head, and turned them out in our midst.

“How they dart and swim round and round!” he exclaimed.

“Splendid,” said Molly.  “I am so sorry I am going away just now.  You will try and keep the water fresh, won’t you?”

“Of course I will.  And let me have the scarlet spider whilst you are away.  I couldn’t find another.”

“Well, if you must; but do take care, Francis.  And here are the two bits of gutta-percha tubing to make into syphons.  You must put them into hot water for a minute before you bend them, you know.”

“I’ll do it to-morrow, Molly; I have nothing else to do, you know, because Edward Brown won’t be back for three or four days.  So we can do nothing about the cricket club.”

It was on the third day, when both the pieces of gutta-percha tubing were in a wash-hand basin of hot water, and the dragon-fly larva and I were finishing a minnow, with the help of the water-scorpion, that Master Edward Brown arrived unexpectedly, and so pressed his friend Francis to come out and consult “just for two minutes,” and so delayed him when he got him, that the tubing melted into a shapeless lump, and the carp died unnoticed by any one but myself.

On the fourth day the glass pond was moved into the conservatory, “to be out of the way.”  The fish were excellent eating, and though the snails were at their wits’ end as the refuse rotted, and the water became more stagnant, and the weeds grew, till all the shell-fish in the pond could not have kept the place clean,—­I did not mind it myself.  As the water got low, I found a nice bit of rockwork above water, where I could sit by day, and at night the lights from the drawing-room gave an indescribable stimulus to my wings, and I sailed in, and flew round and round till I was tired, and (forgetting that no pond, not even a bed of mud, was below me!) drew in my wings, and dropped sharply down on to the floor.  To do the family justice, they learned to know the sound of my fall, and even the old Doctor himself would go down on hands and knees to hunt for me under the sofa, for fear I should be trodden on.