"What's the matter?" said Charlie. "A great, horridgreen worm," said I.
MISS ELLIOT'S GIRLS
STORIES OF
BEASTS, BIRDS, AND BUTTERFLIES
By MRS. MARY SPRING CORNING
A.L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT 1886, BY
CONGREGATIONAL SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND PUBLISHING SOCIETY.
MISS ELLIOT'S GIRLS
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER I.
GREENY, BLACKY, AND SLY-BOOTS.
Sammy Ray was running by the parsonage one day when Miss Ruth called tohim. She was sitting in the vine-shaded porch, and there was a crutchleaning against her chair.
"Sammy," she said, "isn't there a field of tobacco near where you live?"
"Yes'm; two of 'em."
"To-morrow morning look among the tobacco plants and find me a largegreen worm. Have you ever seen a tobacco worm?"
Sammy grinned.
"I've killed more'n a hundred of 'em this summer," he said. "Pat Heeleyhires me to smash all I can find, 'cause they eat the tobacco."
"Well, bring one carefully to me on the leaf where he is feeding; thelargest one you can find."
Before breakfast the next morning Ruth Elliot had her first sight of atobacco worm.
"Take care!" said Sammy, "or he'll spit tobacco juice on you. See thathorn on his tail? When you want to kill him, you jest catch hold thisway, and"—
"But I don't want to kill him," she said. "I want to keep him in thisnice little house I have got ready for him, and give him all the tobaccohe can eat. Will you bring me a fresh leaf every, morning?"
While she was speaking she had put the worm in a box with a cover ofpink netting. On his way home Sammy met Roy Tyler, and told him (as asecret) that the lame lady at the minister's house kept worms, and wouldpay two cents a head for tobacco worms. "Anyway," said Sammy, "that'swhat she paid me."
If there was money to be got in the tobacco-worm business, Roy wanted ashare in it; and before night he brought to Miss Ruth, in an old tinbasin, eight worms of various sizes, from a tiny baby worm just hatched,to a great, ugly creature, jet black, and spotted and barred withyellow. The black worm Miss Ruth consent