'the worm had split in the back and was coming out of his skin.' By the
time she had got on her glasses and was ready to witness this wonderful
sight, it was over. A heap of dried skin lay in the bottom of the box,
and a pretty chrysalis of a delicate green color hung in place of the
worm.

"'O Auntie!' said Charlie, 'you ought to have seen him twist and squirm
and make the split in his back bigger and bigger till it burst open and
tumbled off, just as a boy wriggles out of a tight coat, you know!'

"After this came three weeks of waiting, during which the green
chrysalis turned gray and hard and the other worms, one by one, went
through the same changes, until four gray chrysalis were fastened to the
sides of the box.

"Every day I looked, but nothing happened, until it seemed to me, tired
of waiting, that nothing ever _would_ happen. But one bright morning I
forgot all my weariness when I found, clinging to the netting, a
beautiful creature like the one we saw on the honeysuckle this
afternoon, with a slender black body and wings spotted with yellow and
scarlet and lovely blue. When I opened the box he didn't try to fly. He
was weak and trembling, and his wings were damp, but every moment they
grew larger and his colors brighter in the sunshine.

"While Charlie and I stood watching him, we discussed, in our own way, a
problem that has puzzled wiser heads than ours--how three distinct
individuals (the worm, the chrysalis, and the butterfly) could be one
and the same creature, and how from a low-born worm that groveled and
crawled could be born this bright ethereal being--all light and beauty
and color--that seemed fitted only for the sky.