While she was speaking she had put the worm in a box with a cover of
pink netting. On his way home Sammy met Roy Tyler, and told him (as a
secret) that the lame lady at the minister's house kept worms, and would
pay two cents a head for tobacco worms. "Anyway," said Sammy, "that's
what she paid me."

If there was money to be got in the tobacco-worm business, Roy wanted a
share in it; and before night he brought to Miss Ruth, in an old tin
basin, eight worms of various sizes, from a tiny baby worm just hatched,
to a great, ugly creature, jet black, and spotted and barred with
yellow. The black worm Miss Ruth consented to keep, and Roy, lifting him
by his horn, dropped him on the green worm's back.

"Now you have a Blacky and a Greeny," the boy said; and by these names
they were called.

Roy and Sammy came together the next morning, and watched the worms at
their breakfast.

"How they eat!" said Sammy; "they make their great jaws go like a couple
of old tobacco-chewers."

"Yes; and if they lived on bread and butter 't would cost a lot to feed
'em, wouldn't it?" said Roy.

"Look at my woodbine worm, boys," Miss Ruth said, as she lifted the
cover of another box. "Isn't he a beauty? See the delicate green, shaded
to white, on his back, and that row of spots down his sides looking like
buttons! I call him Sly-boots, because he has a trick of hiding under