"
"Poor fellow!"
"Happy fellow! _I_ say. Why, he has done being a worm. His creeping days
are over. He has only to lie snug and quiet under the ground a while;
then wake and come up to the sunshine some bright morning with a new
body and a pair of lovely wings to spread and fly away with."
"Why, it's like--it's like"--
"What is it like, Sammy?"
"Ain't it like _folks_, Miss Ruth?" Grandma sings:--
'I'll take my wings and fly away
In the morning,'
"Yes," she said; "it _is_ like folks." Then glancing at her crutch,
repeated, smiling: "In the morning."
When the woodbine in the porch had turned red, and the maples in the
door-yard yellow, the flower-pots were removed to the warm cellar, and
one winter evening Sammy Ray wrote Greeny's epitaph:--
"A poor green worm, here I lie;
But by-and-by
I shall fly,
Ever so high,
Into the sky."
He came often in the spring to ask if any thing had happened, and one
day Miss Ruth took from a box and laid in his hand a shining brown
chrysalis, with a curved handle.
"What a funny little brown jug!" said Sammy.
"Greeny is inside; close your hand gently and see if you feel him."
"How cold!" said the boy; and then: "Oh! oh! he _is_ alive, for he
kicks!"
In June Greeny and Blacky came out of their shells, but no one saw them
do it, for it was in the night; but Sly-boots was more obliging.
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