IV. THE BUTTERFLY'S BALL, AND THE PEACOCK AT

Alice. Aunt Charlotte, we have a scheme.

Aunt C. Let me hear it.

Alice. You have a delightful portfolio of drawings of all sorts of things.

Grace. Cats and dogs, and crickets, and nautilus shells, and

Aunt C. Well, we need not have the whole catalogue, Gracie. What of them?

Alice. I thought how nice it would be if we could put together all the verses about each of them. Suppose every evening we fixed on a picture, and

brought all the verses we could hunt up about it in the course of the day.

Edmund. What humbug!

Aunt C. I am not so sure of that, Edmund; I think you would find that we were much amused by the search.

Edmund. For instance, here's your first picture--a glow-worm. What can any one find to say about a glow-worm?

Alice. Oh, Aunt Charlotte, do let me repeat the verses you wrote for me when I was little.

DAME GLOW-WORM'S LAMP.

Oh! see that shining spark,
Bright gleaming in the dark;
Is it a tiny star,

Dropt from the heavens afar?
Gem of the summer night,
Of purest emerald light!
Within her mossy nest,

In grey and russet drest,
Dame Glow-worm trims her light,
To lure her wandering knight.
Sir Glow-worm, clad in mail,
Borne on the summer gale,
With tiny lamp beneath,
Flies over hill and heath.

Wherever he may roam,

Her lamp will call him home.
Pattern of household mirth,

Lighting our home and hearth;
Pattern of homely love,

Caught from the Heaven above;
Pattern of that true Light

That makes our pathway bright.

Edmund. There! they show what nonsense it is. Alice. Not a bit, Edmund. It is quite true, is it not, Aunt, that the male glow-worms fly about and don't shine, and the females shine, but have no wings?

Aunt C. It is nearly true; but I have lately seen it stated that male glow-worms have a very faint lamp on the under side of their bodies, though I am not sure that they always show them. At any rate, we are not likely to find them out, for we usually see the creatures as little beetles, which dash in on early autumn evenings, attracted by our lamps and candles. Edmund. Then this male is neither worm nor glow! Aunt C. A very little glow. The animal is really and truly classed as a beetle with a wingless female. Alice. I am afraid that you are too scientific to enjoy the verses that I have here, since they make the